girls:
1k births since 1917
#4695 (18th percentile)
boys:
858 births since 1898
#3729 (19th percentile)
overall:
1.9k births since 1898
#5881 (24th percentile)
The name Lin is the #5,881 most popular name of all time in the U.S. on a gender-neutral basis, with a total of 1,879 recorded births since 1898. This represents the 24.0% percentile of name popularity (more popular than 24.0% of all names). For girls, it ranks #4,695 (17.8% percentile) for all time with 1,021 births since 1917. For boys, it ranks #3,729 (18.6% percentile) for all time with 858 births since 1898.
Lin first appeared in U.S. birth records in 1898 (1898 for boys and 1917 for girls). Birth data for Lin is available in 107 out of the 126 years between 1898 and 2023 (85 years for girls and 83 years for boys). The Social Security Administration only reports birth data for years in which the name was given to at least five children of the same gender.
The name Lin is truly gender-neutral, with nearly equal distribution between boys and girls. In 2023, 64.3% of babies named Lin were boys. Interestingly, until around 1950, the name was more popular for boys (67.3% boys from 1898 to 1949), but since then it has been more commonly used for girls (62.0% girls from 1950 to 2023).
For girls, Lin reached its peak popularity in 1952, achieving the 4.4% percentile (ranked #660) with 18 births per million. The name was most common in 1952, with 18 births per million (ranked 4.4% percentile). Since reaching a low point around 2018, the popularity of this name for girls has been increasing. Currently, Lin ranks #947 for girls (0.0% percentile) with 3 births per million, which is 15.5% of its peak share of births.
For boys, Lin reached its peak popularity in 1953, achieving the 3.6% percentile (ranked #584) with 13 births per million. The name was most common in 1898, with 38 births per million (ranked 0.0% percentile). Since reaching a high point around 2015, the popularity of this name for boys has been declining. Currently, Lin ranks #907 for boys (0.4% percentile) with 5 births per million, which is 13.0% of its peak share of births.
This chart shows the total number of births per million babies in each year for the name "Lin".
These names exclude other spelling variations of Lynn. View all variations of Lynn.
These similar-looking names have spellings that are closest to the spelling of "Lin", in the sense that there are the fewest number of letter differences between the two spellings. This list excludes the 8 other name spellings that we've determined are also variations of "Lynn" based on shared pronunciations. Click here for more details on names that are pronounced like Lynn..
Our model found one way to pronounce the name Lin. Click the play button under each pronunciation to hear it spoken aloud.
Our model is 100.0% confident that Lin is pronounced as lihn, which has 1 syllables.
If none of the pronunciations above sound right to you, could you please check whether any of these related pronunciations should be applied to the name Lin? These are pronunciations that other similar names use, but which are not currently associated with Lin. If you think any of these are valid pronunciations for Lin, please vote using the thumbs up button.
Our confidence scores estimate the likelihood that a particular pronunciation is the most correct for a given name spelling. These scores are derived from pronunciation dictionaries, manual verification, your feedback, and a fine-tuned large language model trained to generate name pronunciations.
For any given spelling, confidence scores across all identified pronunciations sum to 100%. However, these scores don't account for the possibility of valid pronunciations that our model hasn't identified.
The raw pronunciations shown (like L IH1 N) use the ARPAbet phoneme system, a standardized way to represent English speech sounds. Each symbol represents a distinct sound in American English. Visit the ARPAbet Wikipedia page to learn more about these phonetic symbols.
Pronunciation audio is generated by an open source text to speech model that has been customized to adhere to pronunciations provided in ARPAbet format, but sometimes pronunciations that differ subtly will sound identical, particularly if the only difference is the level of emphasis on a syllable or a single vowel sound.
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