What does Lily mean?
Lily comes directly from the English flower name, ultimately from Latin lilium. The flower has long been associated with purity, giving the personal name a recognizable floral image as well as a short, familiar sound. Its usual English pronunciation is LIL-ee.
Lilly and Lillie are related spellings, while Lilian, Lillian, and Liliana offer longer forms in the same naming family. Lily can stand independently as a full first name. Its four-letter spelling matches the everyday English word, making the flower connection especially immediate.
Lily Bart in The House of Mirth
Edith Wharton made Lily Bart the central character of The House of Mirth, published in 1905. Lily moves within wealthy New York society without possessing the secure fortune that would allow her to maintain its expensive way of life. Marriage, friendship, money, and reputation become closely entangled around her.
The novel explores the gap between her social gifts and her practical independence. Her beauty and ability to charm a room do not protect her from the consequences of other people's judgments. Wharton follows a character whose place within a privileged circle becomes increasingly precarious.
Lily Bart gives the name a substantial literary history, quite different from a passing flower reference. The novel places Lily at the center of a sustained examination of class and expectation, with her first name appearing throughout a story remembered for its social detail and tragic direction.
Lily Tomlin and comedy
Performer Lily Tomlin gives the name a prominent connection with American comedy. On Laugh-In, she developed recognizable characters including Ernestine, a telephone operator, and Edith Ann, a child. Their voices, attitudes, and ways of observing adults helped make character performance central to her comedy.
Her stage work includes The Search for Signs of Intelligent Life in the Universe, written by Jane Wagner. Tomlin performs a range of characters rather than staying with a single role, moving between different perspectives within one theatrical work. The collaboration extended her character-based comedy into a full-length stage setting.
Tomlin received the Kennedy Center's Mark Twain Prize for American Humor in 2003. The recognition celebrated a career encompassing television, theater, and film. Her name offers a public performing association alongside the fictional Lily Bart, with the same short first name attached to very different kinds of storytelling.
Sound and related names
Lily has two syllables and first-syllable stress. Repeated l sounds connect the opening and middle, followed by an ee ending. Lilly keeps the same usual pronunciation with an extra letter; Lillie changes the written ending. Liliana lengthens the name into a different rhythm while retaining the lily family connection.
Lily in the United States
Lily reached its highest American girls' count and best rank in 2011, with 8,192 babies and No. 15. It ranked No. 35 in 2020 and No. 18 in 2025. Those figures show a name that remained prominent after its 2011 peak and returned close to its strongest national position.
Sources & methodologyReferences, data & attribution
Meaning and history draw on the references below. American popularity figures use published Social Security Administration records for this exact spelling; counts below five for a name, sex, and year are omitted.
How popular is Lily?
In 2025, Lily ranked #18 among girls in the United States, with 6,673 recorded uses. The U.S. birth records first list this spelling for girls in 1880; its largest annual count was 8,192 in 2011. Rankings count each spelling separately. They describe national use, so local familiarity can differ. The popularity chart shows whether the name has remained common, returned after a quieter period, or risen recently.