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Boys' name · 292,118 recorded births

Leo

#19 in the US in 2025

Where Leo stands

United States register · 1880–2025

#19boys’ names · US 2025

Leo was the 19th most registered boys' name in the United States in 2025, on 8,173 births.

peak 2022 · 8,293188019532025

Its moment was 2022, when 8,293 babies were given it.

SOURCE·US Social Security Administration, national baby-name data·Public domain. retrieved from the Internet Archive's 2026 snapshot of ssa.gov (ssa.gov refuses automated requests); files unmodified. SSA lists a name only if it was given to at least 5 babies of that sex that year.·REVIEWED JUL 2026

#19US rank, 2025 (boys)
8,173US births in 2025
#18its best US rank, in 2023
2022peak year — 8,293 births
259,988US births since 1880
5,943NZ births since 1900
24,044E&W births, 2019–2025
Saved in this browser only — no account, nothing sent anywhere.

How Leo's figures are worked out

  1. Counts come straight from the registrars: the US Social Security Administration (1880–2025) and the New Zealand Department of Internal Affairs (1900–2025). Nothing is scraped from another names site. The SSA files are the agency's own, retrieved from the Internet Archive's 2026 snapshot of ssa.gov (ssa.gov refuses automated requests); files unmodified.
  2. Ranks are computed against every name in that year's file, not just the ones this site publishes pages for — otherwise a rank would flatter every name we happen to list.
  3. The curve is drawn on births per 100,000 of that sex, not raw counts. Raw counts across eras are misleading: far more births were registered in 1957 than in 1890, so a flat count is a falling share.
  4. The reporting floor. Each registrar publishes a name only once it clears a threshold — 5 births of that sex in the US, 10 in New Zealand. Expressed as a share that threshold is itself a curve, and it is drawn on every chart here as the shaded band along the base.
  5. A missing year is a suppressed value, never a zero. Where the registrar published nothing, this site prints “below floor” or “<5”, the curve is broken rather than drawn across the gap, and the missing years are marked on the floor line. Leo was under the floor in no year of its US record.
share per 100,000 = births ÷ all births of that sex that year × 100,000
reporting floor (share) = 5 ÷ all births of that sex that year × 100,000

Full methodology →

Leo in the United States

188019001920194019601980200020200.0267533
Births per 100,000 of that sex, so eras compare fairly. The shaded band is the 5-birth reporting floor — under it the registrar publishes nothing, so a line that stops has left the record, not fallen to zero. Leo in the United States, 1880–2025
boysgirls

Between 2016 and 2025 the name has been rising — up 71% as a share of boys' births.

SOURCE·US Social Security Administration, national baby-name data·Public domain. retrieved from the Internet Archive's 2026 snapshot of ssa.gov (ssa.gov refuses automated requests); files unmodified. SSA lists a name only if it was given to at least 5 babies of that sex that year.·REVIEWED JUL 2026

Leo in New Zealand

In New Zealand, Leo has been registered 5,943 times since 1900, peaking in 2019 with 257 births. It ranked #6 for boys in 2025 on 168 births.

19001920194019601980200020200.06951389
Births per 100,000 of that sex, so eras compare fairly. The shaded band is the 10-birth reporting floor — under it the registrar publishes nothing, so a line that stops has left the record, not fallen to zero. Leo in New Zealand, 1900–2025

SOURCE·NZ Department of Internal Affairs, births by first name·CC BY 4.0. DIA lists a name only if it was given to at least 10 babies of that sex that year.·REVIEWED JUL 2026

Leo in England & Wales

In England and Wales, Leo was registered 24,044 times between 2019 and 2025, peaking in 2019 with 3,637 births. It ranked #3 for boys in 2025 on 3,278 births.

20200.06351269
Births per 100,000 of that sex, so eras compare fairly. The shaded band is the 3-birth reporting floor — under it the registrar publishes nothing, so a line that stops has left the record, not fallen to zero. Leo in England and Wales, 2019–2025
boysgirls

Seven years is a window, not a history. Unlike the American and New Zealand series this one cannot show you a name's arrival or its long decline — ONS publishes the full list only from 2019. England and Wales only: Scotland and Northern Ireland publish separately and are not counted here.

SOURCE·Office for National Statistics, baby names in England and Wales·Open Government Licence v3.0. ONS redacts any name given to 2 or fewer babies of that sex that year, under s40 of the Freedom of Information Act.·REVIEWED JUL 2026

Decade by decade in the US

US rank and births at each decade markSSA · JUL 2026
YearRankBirths
1880#92147
1890#49393
1900#46570
1910#51707
1920#484,054
1930#633,035
1940#1121,752
1950#1601,554
1960#2301,204
1970#294701
1980#367473
1990#477431
2000#388658
2010#1911,946
2020#367,229

<5 = the SSA published no figure for that year. It is a suppressed value, not a zero.

Where in the United States

The states that registered Leo most often since 1880. These are lifetime totals, so they track state population as much as local taste — a name common in Wyoming will never out-count California.

StateBirths
California22,981
New York21,079
Pennsylvania14,604
Texas13,797
Illinois13,398
Massachusetts13,007
Michigan10,580
Ohio9,289
Minnesota7,084
Florida6,783

Questions about Leo

How popular is the name Leo?

Leo ranked #19 for boys in the United States in 2025, on 8,173 births registered with the Social Security Administration.

When was Leo most popular?

Leo peaked in 2022, when 8,293 babies in the United States were given the name.

Is Leo rising or falling?

Measured as a share of all boys' births, Leo has been rising between 2016 and 2025 (+71%).

Same sex, peaking within a few years of 2022, at a comparable scale. Not a taste engine — this is arithmetic on peak years, which is why it will occasionally hand you something unfashionable that is nonetheless exactly of the period.

SOURCE·US SSA (1880–2025) + NZ DIA (1900–2025) birth registrations·ranks and shares computed from the source files, see method·REVIEWED JUL 2026

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Amit Sharma

Auckland real-estate agent and marketer. Builds free, sourced data tools.