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Girls' name · 982,756 recorded births

Lisa

#987 in the US in 2025

Where Lisa stands

United States register · 1880–2025

#987girls’ names · US 2025

Lisa was the 987th most registered girls' name in the United States in 2025, on 256 births.

peak 1965 · 60,271188019532025

Its moment was 1965, when 60,271 babies were given it. In 18 of the years between, the name fell under the 5-birth floor and the registrar published nothing — those years are the marks along the base of the chart, not gaps in the name's use.

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

#987US rank, 2025 (girls)
256US births in 2025
#1its best US rank, in 1962
1965peak year — 60,271 births
967,229US births since 1886
12,422NZ births since 1956
322E&W births, 2019–2025
Saved in this browser only — no account, nothing sent anywhere.

How Lisa'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. Lisa was under the floor in 18 years 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 →

Lisa in the United States

188019001920194019601980200020200.017073414
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. Lisa in the United States, 1880–2025
girlsboys

Between 2016 and 2025 the name has been steady.

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

Lisa in New Zealand

In New Zealand, Lisa has been registered 12,422 times since 1956, peaking in 1969 with 934 births. It ranked #399 for girls in 2025 on 10 births.

19001920194019601980200020200.018653730
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. Lisa 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

Lisa in England & Wales

In England and Wales, Lisa was registered 322 times between 2019 and 2025, peaking in 2025 with 57 births. It ranked #661 for girls in 2025 on 57 births. Across those years it has been rising.

20200.01123
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. Lisa in England and Wales, 2019–2025

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
1890below floor<5
1900below floor<5
1910#1,6349
1920#2,17217
1930#1,34732
1940#73489
1950#2201,175
1960#633,693
1970#238,967
1980#1615,664
1990#645,347
2000#2941,088
2010#712396
2020#1,031243

<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 Lisa most often since 1886. 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
California94,846
New York87,365
Pennsylvania59,556
Ohio54,494
Illinois50,007
Texas49,557
Michigan44,630
New Jersey33,646
Massachusetts33,228
Indiana27,201

Questions about Lisa

How popular is the name Lisa?

Lisa ranked #987 for girls in the United States in 2025, on 256 births registered with the Social Security Administration.

When was Lisa most popular?

Lisa peaked in 1965, when 60,271 babies in the United States were given the name.

Is Lisa rising or falling?

Measured as a share of all girls' births, Lisa has been steady between 2016 and 2025.

Same sex, peaking within a few years of 1965, 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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Published by

Amit Sharma

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