Boy Names Starting With L

Ranks are each name's overall position among all 2025 boy names, so the gaps between rows are real — the names in between simply start with other letters. Want a random shortlist instead? Spin L boy names in the generator, or browse the full top 100 boy names.

How common L names are

In the 2025 top 1,000 for boys, L supplies 49 names and 8.3% of the births, which places it 3rd of the 26 initials by share. The letter's #1 name, Liam, holds overall rank #1 with 20,818 births; its 50th and last name, Lev, was recorded 227 times at #1,001.

That 8.3% is L's births inside the 2025 top 1,000 divided by the births of all 1,000 names — the convention the reading ranks and counts guide walks through — and the 49-name count is taken at that same depth, not at the 50-name depth of the table above.

L names across the decades

Counting only names inside each snapshot's top 200, the L tally for boys runs 14 in 1955, 12 in 1965, 7 in 1975, 8 in 1985, 5 in 1995, 8 in 2005, 11 in 2015 — highest in 1955, lowest in 1995. The leading name was Larry (#19) in 1955 and Liam (#2) in 2015. Cut to the same top-200 depth, the 2025 list holds 15 L names, led by Liam at #1. 4 different names hold the lead across those snapshots: Larry, Luis, Logan, and Liam. No name on the 2025 L table appears in all 7 snapshot top-200 lists.

L names held 3.4% of the top-200 births for boys in 1955 and 8.1% in 2015; at the same depth in 2025 the figure is 10.6%. The first-letter trends guide sets L's share beside the other 25 initials for every snapshot year from 1955 to 2015, for both sexes.

Faded and new

The snapshot lists hold 6 L names for boys that the 2025 top 50 does not: Larry (1955–1985, best #19 in 1955), Leslie (1955, 1965, best #138 in 1955), Lloyd (1955, 1965, best #147 in 1955), Lonnie (1955, 1965, best #155 in 1955), Lester (1955, best #168 in 1955), and Lynn (1955, best #196 in 1955). The years in parentheses are the snapshot years whose top 200 included the name; the most recent of them to chart is Larry, in 1985.

In the other direction, 31 of the 50 names on the 2025 list are absent from every snapshot top 200: the first 12 by rank are Luka (#85), Lorenzo (#117), Legend (#193), Lane (#250), Lukas (#288), Lennox (#289), Luciano (#305), Leonel (#350), Lawson (#381), Leandro (#406), Lucca (#425), and Lian (#428), and the remaining 19 follow in the table above.

Read both lists against the depths that produce them — 200 ranks per snapshot year, 50 names for L in 2025 with the last at #1,001: a name missing from a snapshot may sit below rank 200 that year, and a name missing from the 2025 list may sit below Lev; the committed files do not say.

Shape of the list

Four letters or fewer describes 13 of the 50 names on the 2025 table (Liam, for one); five to seven letters, 33 (Lucas, for one); eight or more, 4 (Leonardo, for one). The longest spellings on the 2025 list, at 8 letters, are Leonardo, Leonidas, Lawrence, and Langston; the shortest, at 3, are Leo, Lee, and Lev.

1 of the 50 names rank past #1,000, beyond the top-1,000 list the generator's 2025 era samples; the rest divide into 10 inside the top 100 (2 inside the top 10), 18 at ranks 101–500, and 21 at 501–1,000.

3 names on this list also appear on the 2025 girls' L list, each ranked separately per sex by the SSA: Logan (#53 for boys, #402 for girls), Lennon (#808 for boys, #214 for girls), and Legacy (#957 for boys, #662 for girls). Second letters on the 2025 list number 5; e leads them, opening 19 of the 50 names (Le-), with La- (11) next.

L boy names: questions answered from the data

Other letters

Girl names for this letter: girl names starting with L.

Source: every name, rank, and count on this page comes from the U.S. Social Security Administration's national baby-names dataset (2025 data, from Social Security card applications). It is public-domain U.S. government data; names given fewer than 5 times in a year are excluded by the SSA, spelling variants are counted separately, and the data covers U.S. births only. Full caveats on the methodology page.