Lily
- Pronunciation
- [Li-ly]
- Gender
- Female
- Meaning
- Lily
- Origin
- Hebrew
About the Name Lily
Lily is one of the small group of English flower names — alongside Rose, Daisy, Iris, and Violet — that emerged as personal names during the late Victorian era's flower-language revival. The lily flower itself carries deep symbolic weight across Western religious and cultural traditions: in Christian iconography, the white lily is the flower of the Virgin Mary's purity (the "Madonna lily"); in classical mythology, lilies grew from the milk of Hera; and the fleur-de-lis (a stylized lily) has been the heraldic symbol of French royalty for over a millennium.
The Hebrew word shoshana (also rendered Susanna in Greek) was traditionally translated as "lily," though many botanical scholars now believe the biblical "lily of the valley" actually referred to a different flower. Regardless, Lily's combined Christian-iconographic, classical-mythological, and Hebrew-biblical associations gave the name a multi-layered religious register. Notable bearers include 1960s singer Lily Tomlin, actress Lily Allen (the British pop singer), and Lily Potter (the fictional mother of Harry Potter, whose name carries Christian-symbolic weight in the novels' iconography).
Lily's American climb began in the late 1990s and pushed it into the US top 30 girls' rank by 2008. The name's appeal is the combination of botanical simplicity and religious-symbolic depth — two short syllables, instantly readable, no spelling debate, and the inherent flower imagery giving it a clean tonal register. Common nicknames are scarce since the name is already short — Lil, Lils, and the rare Lillybug each appear. The longer formal forms Lillian, Liliana, and Lilith (a separate Hebrew name) are sometimes treated as variants.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Lily
US Popularity History (2000–2025)
Annual US births named Lily by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 2011 with 8,192 girls named Lily (girl rank #15 that year).
Where it stands today: in 2025, ranked #18 for girls (6,673 US births). That's 3 places below its 2011 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 Lily Most Popular?
Average girl-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 girls-name rankings — a per-capita measure that isn't biased toward large states. For Lily the strongest states are Utah, Hawaii, New Hampshire.
Strongest girls-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Utah | #12 | 1,161 |
| 2 | Hawaii | #14 | 242 |
| 3 | New Hampshire | #22 | 279 |
| 4 | Idaho | #23 | 387 |
| 5 | Montana | #23 | 207 |
| 6 | Colorado | #24 | 1,072 |
| 7 | Tennessee | #24 | 1,401 |
| 8 | Connecticut | #24 | 675 |
| 9 | Pennsylvania | #24 | 2,182 |
| 10 | Washington | #24 | 1,397 |
Weakest girls-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | West Virginia | #64 | 205 |
| 2 | Mississippi | #51 | 346 |
| 3 | District of Columbia | #50 | 157 |
| 4 | Indiana | #45 | 973 |
| 5 | Texas | #44 | 4,468 |
| 6 | North Dakota | #42 | 168 |
| 7 | Nebraska | #41 | 327 |
| 8 | Ohio | #41 | 1,741 |
| 9 | Iowa | #40 | 495 |
| 10 | New Mexico | #39 | 262 |
Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Lily in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.
Variant Forms
| Name | Meaning | Gender | Origin |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lil | Name Of A Saint | Female | Irish |
| Lila | Feminine Of Lyle From The Island. Variant Of Delilah. | Female | English |
| Lili | The Flower Lily Is A Symbol Of Innocence: Purity And Beauty. | Female | French |
| Lilia | Form Of Lilac; Having A Bluish Color LUBMILLA | Female | Russian |
| Lilian | Lily | Female | Romanian |
| Liliana | Lily | Female | Italian |
| Lilli | The Flower Lily Is A Symbol Of Innocence: Purity And Beauty. | Female | German |
| Lillie | The Flower Lily Is A Symbol Of Innocence: Purity And Beauty. | Female | English |
| Lilly | The Flower Lily Is A Symbol Of Innocence: Purity And Beauty. | Female | English |
Famous People Named Lily
1 notable figure from history and culture who share the name Lily.
- Lily Tomlin — TV Actress (1939)
Looking for names like Lily?
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 Lily to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Lily against today's most popular girls-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).
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