Lance
- Pronunciation
- [Lance]
- Gender
- Male
- Meaning
- Servant
- Origin
- French
About the Name Lance
Lance is a French-origin name sometimes glossed as "servant," though the name is more commonly associated in medieval tradition with the weapon — the long cavalry spear — derived from Old French lance, itself from Latin lancea. The given name was reinforced by the legendary figure of Lancelot, the most celebrated knight of the Arthurian cycle, whose name begins with the same element. Whether through the martial image of the lance or the chivalric resonance of Arthurian legend, the name carries a distinctly medieval knightly character that gives it a romantic, heroic edge.
Among notable bearers is Lance Armstrong (born 1971), an American former professional road-cycling racer whose 1999–2005 seven consecutive Tour de France victories — and subsequent 2012 lifetime ban from professional cycling for doping fraud — produced one of the most complex sporting narratives of the early twenty-first century.
Lance first entered the US Social Security top-1000 in 1970 and peaked that same year at rank #76 — its best performance coinciding with its chart debut — suggesting it arrived as part of an established wave of interest in short, sharp medieval-flavored masculine names. It has maintained a continuous presence through 2024, most recently sitting at rank #841 with 290 births. Total top-1000 births exceed 24,000 across its tracked span. The variants field for Lance is empty, reflecting the name's concise, unadorned character.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Lance
US Popularity History (1970–2025)
Annual US births named Lance by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 1970 with 4,160 boys named Lance (boy rank #76 that year).
Where it stands today: in 2025, ranked #862 for boys (279 US births). That's 786 places below its 1970 peak.
Source: US Social Security Administration. Limitations: US birth-certificate data only; names appearing fewer than 5 times in a given year are suppressed for privacy; spelling variants are counted separately. For names that ranked outside the US top 100 before year 2000, only the years they reached the top 100 are shown — the chart may have gaps for less-popular historical names.
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Where in the US Is Lance Most Popular?
Average boy-name rank within each state across 2016–2025 SSA records. A lower number means the name appears closer to the top of that state's boys-name rankings — a per-capita measure that isn't biased toward large states. For Lance the strongest states are Louisiana, Wisconsin, Mississippi.
Strongest boys-name states
Weakest boys-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | New York | #917 | 104 |
| 2 | Georgia | #815 | 78 |
| 3 | California | #796 | 260 |
| 4 | Illinois | #788 | 92 |
| 5 | North Carolina | #783 | 87 |
| 6 | Texas | #773 | 300 |
| 7 | Virginia | #753 | 72 |
| 8 | New Jersey | #743 | 42 |
| 9 | Washington | #733 | 73 |
| 10 | Alabama | #722 | 31 |
Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Lance in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.
Famous People Named Lance
1 notable figure from history and culture who share the name Lance.
- Lance Armstrong — Cyclist (1971)
Looking for names like Lance?
A dedicated page with 60+ related names — spelling variants, rhymes, alliterations, same-origin matches, and shared meaning concepts — lives at its own URL so each kind of similarity gets a deeper treatment than fits here.
Compare Lance to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Lance against today's most popular boys-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).
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