Lilly
Meaning
variant of Lily, from the flower
The story
Lilly is the flower with a doubled l, and the doubling is older than it looks: about 3,000 girls in the 1920s wore it when it was simply a common spelling, not a variant. The midcentury fade bottomed near 630 in the 1970s. Then the great Lily boom lifted every spelling at once: about 17,300 in the 2000s, 23,500 in the 2010s, and 7,600 so far this decade, a real cooldown from the peak decades that the record states plainly. Lily, Lilly, Lillie and Lilliana all chart separately, and the shared flower is one of the century's biggest girls' sounds. In our records Lilly counts about 65,900 girls to 24 boys, all girls this decade. The flower has meant purity for millennia and spring for longer; the extra l means only that a family liked the balance of it, which is reason enough.
Lilly's name family
One shared root links 4 names across 2 languages.
Shared root: from Latin lilium "lily", the flower of purity
The constellation
More branches
Popularity, 1890–2024
Shape drawn from US Social Security baby-name records. Lilly peaked in the 2010s.
See popularity in Brazil
Popularity in Brazil
172 people · the #28,262 first name in Brazil · about 1 in 1,000,000 · median age 16
Among people named Lilly living in Brazil at the 2022 census, more were born in the 2010s than in any other decade.
The census also counted 49 born between 2020 and August 2022, too recent a span to chart.
Source: IBGE, Censo Demográfico 2022
When you meet Lilly
Most people given the name Lilly in the United States are children or teenagers today. The name belongs to this generation.
Estimated from US Social Security birth registrations and typical lifespans; a rough guide, not a rule.
The Lilly deep dive
Whether you’re naming a baby or exploring your own name’s history, this is a personal letter, not a list: where Lilly truly comes from, how it traveled, and what a century of records reveals. If you have grown a tree on nametree, it also considers how Lilly fits with your family’s names and surname.
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