Lucy
A feminine name of Latin origin meaning "light" or "born at dawn".
Roughly 124,073 people in the United States go by the first name Lucy, which ranks #34 nationally when sorted by estimated living bearers. The name is used almost exclusively for girls. The average person named Lucy today is around 28 years old, and the year with the single highest number of Lucy births was 2024 (5,396 babies). In terms of living bearers, it sits close to Marc (123,850).
This page is the full Name Census profile for Lucy. Below you will find a gender breakdown showing how the name splits between male and female registrations, a year-by-year popularity chart stretching back to 1880, decade-level totals, the top US states for this name, its meaning and etymology, and a set of frequently asked questions with data-backed answers.
For a British comparison, Name Census UK has a UK baby-name profile for Lucy with official rankings and popularity over time.
Key insights
- • Although Lucy is used almost entirely for girls, the SSA data does show 636 boys registered with the name since 1880.
People living today
124K
~ 1 in 2,763 Americans
Peak year
2024
5,396 babies that year
Average age
28
years old
2022 SSA rank
#34
Tracked since 1880
Census
Lucy in the 2020 Census
The 2020 Census recorded 130,373 people with the first name Lucy, which placed it at #433 in the published first-name tables. This is a snapshot of people who already had the name at the time of the Census.
The SSA sections elsewhere on this page answer a different question: how often parents gave the name to babies over time. The "people living today" figure on this page is different again: it is a current estimate built from SSA birth records and age-based survival rates, so the two numbers are not expected to match exactly.
2020 Census rank
#433
National first-name rank
People counted
130K
130,373 in the published race/origin table
Per 100,000
43.2
People with this name in 2020
Largest reported group
White
66.5% of people with this name
Demographics
Ancestry and ethnicity for Lucy
In the 2020 Census race and Hispanic-origin table, the largest reported group for people named Lucy is White at 66.5%. The next largest groups are Hispanic (17.9%) and Black (6.1%). These figures describe the people who had the name in 2020, not any inherent property of the name itself.
The bar chart below shows how people with the first name Lucy described their own race and ethnicity on the 2020 Census form. The Census Bureau groups responses into six broad categories: White, Black or African American, Hispanic or Latino, Asian and Pacific Islander, American Indian and Alaska Native, and Two or More Races. When a category has too few respondents for a given name, the Bureau suppresses the figure to protect individual privacy, which is why some names show fewer than six slices.
Percentages are shown so the breakdown is easy to read across every published category. Because the 2020 Census first-name file also includes raw headcounts for each group, Name Census can show those alongside the percentages in the legend and hover tooltip.
Keep in mind that these are self-reported numbers. A first name does not determine a person's race or ethnicity, and the distribution you see here reflects the specific population who happened to carry the name Lucy at the time of the 2020 Census, not any inherent property of the name itself.
- White66.5% · 86,643
- Hispanic or Latino17.9% · 23,374
- Black or African American6.1% · 7,955
- Asian and Pacific Islander5.6% · 7,352
- Two or more races3.1% · 4,025
- American Indian and Alaska Native0.8% · 1,024
Gender
Gender distribution for Lucy
Out of the 231,379 babies given the name Lucy since 1880, 99.7% were registered as female. The name sits firmly on the female side of the spectrum, with only a handful of male registrations across the entire dataset.
Lucy as a male name
- Ranked #13,560 in 2022
- 5 male births in 2022
- Peak: 1924 (22 births)
Lucy as a female name
- Ranked #34 in 2024
- 5,396 female births in 2024
- Peak: 2024 (5,396 births)
2020 Census snapshot
In the 2020 Census sex table, Lucy appears almost entirely female. Of the 130,370 people counted with this name, 99.8% were female and only a very small share were male.
Popularity
Lucy: popularity over time
The SSA tracks Lucy from the 1880s through to the 2020s, spanning 15 decades of birth certificate data. The biggest single decade for the name was the 2010s, with 42,029 total registrations. Although the numbers have come down from the 2010s peak, Lucy remains solidly in use and shows no sign of disappearing from maternity wards.
Babies born per year
Decades
Lucy by decade
The table below breaks the full SSA timeline into ten-year windows. Each row shows how many male and female babies were given the name Lucy during that decade, along with a combined total. This is useful for spotting eras where the name surged or retreated.
Geography
Where Lucys live
The SSA's state-level files cover 51 states and territories. New York, California, Texas recorded the most babies named Lucy, while Wyoming, Delaware, South Dakota recorded the fewest. The average across all reporting states is about 3,899 registrations each.
Origin
Meaning and history of Lucy
The name Lucy derives from the Latin name Lucia, which was the feminine form of the Roman family name Lucius. The name Lucius itself originated from the Latin word "lux," meaning light. Lucy was quite a common name among early Christian martyrs and saints.
The earliest known bearer of the name Lucy was Saint Lucy, a young Christian martyr who was killed in Syracuse, Sicily, during the Diocletianic Persecution in 304 AD. According to legend, she was a young Christian who had her eyes gouged out for her faith, and she is depicted in artwork holding a dish with two eyes on it. Saint Lucy's memorial is celebrated on December 13 in the Western Christian Church.
Another early prominent figure with the name Lucy was Lucy, Countess of Bolingbroke (c. 1092 - 1137), an English noblewoman who founded the Benedictine Markyate Priory in Hertfordshire, England, and became its first prioress.
In literature, one of the earliest mentions of the name Lucy is in Dante Alighieri's epic poem "The Divine Comedy," written in the early 14th century. Lucy appears as a representation of the illuminating grace of God in the Purgatorio section of the poem.
Throughout history, there have been several notable figures named Lucy. These include Lucy Hay, Countess of Carlisle (1599-1660), an English noblewoman and courtier during the reign of King Charles I; Lucy Hutchinson (1620-1681), an English biographer and writer; Lucy Wharton, Countess of Huntingdon (1720-1794), an English noblewoman who played a significant role in the Methodist movement; and Lucy Stone (1818-1893), a prominent American abolitionist and suffragist.
In the arts, one of the most famous Lucys is Lucy Maud Montgomery (1874-1942), the Canadian author best known for her novel "Anne of Green Gables" and its sequels. Another notable Lucy is Lucy Lawless (born 1968), a New Zealand actress best known for her role as Xena in the television series "Xena: Warrior Princess."
Notable bearers
Famous people named Lucy
People
Lucy + last name combinations
How many people share a full name with Lucy as the first name? Click a combination below to see the estimate, or search any pairing.
Related
Other names starting with L
Other first names starting with L with a similar number of bearers.
FAQ
Lucy: questions and answers
How many people in the U.S. are named Lucy?
Name Census puts the figure at roughly 124,073 living Americans. We arrive at this by taking every SSA birth registration for Lucy going back to 1880 and adjusting each cohort for expected survival using CDC actuarial life tables. The result is an age-weighted living-bearer count, not a raw birth total. That works out to about 1 in 2,763 US residents.
Is Lucy a common name?
We classify Lucy as "Common". It ranks above 99.6% of all first names in the SSA dataset by living bearers. Across the full history of the data, 231,379 babies have been registered with this name.
When was Lucy most popular?
The single biggest year for Lucy was 2024, when 5,396 babies received the name. The fact that the average living Lucy is about 28 years old gives you a rough sense of which era contributed the most bearers who are still alive today.
How common was Lucy in the 2020 Census?
The published 2020 Census first-name tables recorded 130,373 people with the name Lucy, or 43.17 per 100,000 residents. That placed it at #433 in the national Census ranking for first names.
Why is the Census count different from the living estimate?
Because they measure different things. The Census figure is a count of people who had the name Lucy in 2020. The living estimate aims to answer a current question instead: how many people with the name are alive today, based on SSA birth records and age-based survival rates. Since one number is a 2020 snapshot and the other is a present-day estimate, they are not expected to be identical.
What does the Census say about the gender split for Lucy?
In the 2020 Census sex table, Lucy appears almost entirely female. Of the 130,370 people counted with this name, 99.8% were female and only a very small share were male. The Census view is a snapshot of people living with the name in 2020, while the SSA section above tracks births across time.
What does the Census say about the background of people named Lucy?
In the 2020 Census race and Hispanic-origin table, the largest reported group for people named Lucy is White at 66.5%. The next largest groups are Hispanic (17.9%) and Black (6.1%). These figures describe the people who had the name in 2020, not any inherent property of the name itself. The percentages in the chart above come from self-reported race and Hispanic-origin responses in the 2020 Census.
Which group reports the name Lucy most often in the Census?
White is the largest reported group for people named Lucy in the 2020 Census, accounting for 66.5% (86,643 people in the published table).
Why can the Census sex total and race total differ slightly?
The Census Bureau published separate 2020 tables for sex and for race/Hispanic origin, and the released figures can differ slightly because of privacy protection in the public files. That is why this page treats the gender section and the race/origin section as two related snapshots instead of forcing them into one identical total.
Does every first name have Census demographic data?
No. The public Census first-name release only includes names that met the Bureau's publication rules, so many rarer names in the SSA files have no Census demographic snapshot. When that happens, the SSA trend, gender history, and state sections still appear, but the 2020 Census demographic sections are omitted.
What does the SSA popularity chart show?
The chart tracks births, not the number of people alive with the name today. Each point shows how many babies were given the name Lucy in that year. That makes it useful for spotting when the name rose, peaked, or faded.
Is Lucy a female name?
Yes, 99.7% of people registered as Lucy in the SSA data are female. You can see the full per-sex comparison in the gender distribution section above, which includes the latest year rank, birth count, and peak year for each sex.
Is Lucy still being used today?
Yes. The SSA still recorded Lucy in 2024, and the page above shows its latest-year rank where available. A name can be well past its peak and still remain in steady use, especially if it built up a large population over earlier decades.
Why can a name have a lot of living bearers even if it is not trendy now?
Because living-bearer counts and current baby-name popularity measure different things. A name like Lucy can build up a very large population over many decades, even if fewer parents are choosing it now than they did at its peak.
Where does this data come from?
First-name figures come from the Social Security Administration's national baby name files, which cover every name on a birth certificate from 1880 to 2024. Living-bearer estimates layer in CDC actuarial life tables broken out by sex to account for mortality. The population baseline (342,754,338) is the Census Bureau's latest national estimate. You can read the full calculation on our methodology page.
How many Americans are named Lucy?
See how many Americans are named Lucy on HowManyOfMe.org, our sister site built around that single question.