Evelyn, Brooklyn, Kaitlyn: the names that end in lyn

One American girl in 23 born in 2017 had a first name ending in lyn or lynn. That is 73,192 girls, spread across 1,597 spellings, and it is the most in any year we hold. In England and Wales in 2025 it was one girl in 116, and seven in ten of those girls were called Evelyn. Per head the ending is five times more American than British. Evelyn herself is not. She was given to 6.2 girls in every 1,000 in both countries, as close to level as two countries get.

The ending has come and gone three times in America, on different names each time. Evelyn carried it on her own until 1930. Carolyn and Marilyn took it to its record in 1942, one girl in 33. It fell to one girl in 227 by 1976. Then Kaitlyn brought it back, in six spellings, and in 2000 those six spellings added together were the third biggest girls' name in America. Now it is Brooklyn, Madelyn, Adalynn and Raelynn, and a third of the American girls with the ending have a name that was never in the top 1,000 in any year from 1880 to 2008.

How we counted

A name counts if its last letters, as the official file spells it, are l-y-n or l-y-n-n. That is spelling, not sound. Evelyn, Carolyn, Kaitlyn, Brooklyn, Madelyn, Adalynn and Raelynn count. Caroline, Madeline, Adeline, Caitlin and Kaitlin do not, and we give their figures further down. Lynne ends in lynne and is out. Lynn on its own is in, because the rule is mechanical, and so is Flynn, which is a surname that happens to end that way. Boys and girls are counted from their own lists in the files, never from our catalogue's flag. There is no hand list. The American series from 1880 to 2008 holds the top 1,000 names each year, so its figures are a floor; the full American files for 1990 to 2017 and the English and Welsh files for 2024 and 2025 count every name. American counts are from 2017, the newest full count we hold, and the American rankings run to 2025. This is the seventh ending we have counted, after the last letter, son, O, ley, er and ia.

Evelyn, then Carolyn

In 1880 the ending was six names and one girl in 417. Evelyn was 133rd and half of it; the others were Carolyn 163rd, Ethelyn, Evalyn, Gwendolyn 871st and Lynn 897th. Then Evelyn climbed, and the ending climbed with her, because for fifty years she was most of it: 70th in 1900, 18th in 1907, when she was 88% of every girl with the ending, and 10th in 1915, one girl in 88. The ending was one girl in 71 that year and Evelyn was 80% of it. She was also listed as a boys' name in eight of the years from 1903 to 1930, never for more than one boy in 13,000.

Marilyn passed her in 1931. First listed in 1906 at 758th, Marilyn was 22nd in 1930 and 13th in 1936, one girl in 97. Carolyn passed them both in 1938, and in 1942 she was 10th, one girl in 70, and the ending reached its record in the long series: 30 girls per 1,000, one in 33, across 23 names. Carolyn was 48% of it. In 1943 Carolyn was 11th, Marilyn 27th, Evelyn 53rd, Lynn 134th and Gwendolyn 161st. Lynn is its own story. She was given to more boys than girls per head in every year to 1941, 141st for boys that year, and to more girls from 1942, reaching 58th for girls in 1956 and leaving the boys' top 1,000 after 1986 and the girls' after 1996.

Then it fell for thirty years. One girl in 42 in 1950, one in 72 in 1960, one in 135 in 1970, and one in 227 in 1976, the low, when Carolyn at 129th was still the biggest name with the ending and only nine of them were in the top 1,000. Evelyn was 288th in 1980, her worst year. Gwendolyn, 112th in 1951, was 441st. Marilyn was 393rd.

Kaitlyn, six ways

Jaclyn led the ending for most of the 1980s without getting above 115th. The name that brought it back was Kaitlyn, and Kaitlyn did it by being spelled six ways. In the full count for 1990, which holds every name, Kaitlyn had 4,312 girls and Katelyn 4,485, 78th and 75th. Add Caitlyn 1,584, Katlyn 777, Katelynn 695 and Kaitlynn 340 and the six are 12,193 girls, one in 156, the 25th biggest girls' name if they were one name. By 2000 they were 20,244, one girl in 90, and as one name they were third in America, behind Emily and Hannah. On the official list Kaitlyn alone was 30th. (Caitlin and Kaitlin, which end in lin, are not counted. They added 4,102 and 2,135 in 2000. With them the name would have been first.)

The ending as a whole went from one girl in 65 in 1990 to one in 35 in 2000, and 34 names with it were in the top 1,000 that year: Kaitlyn 29th, Katelyn 54th, Caitlyn 118th, Jocelyn 122nd, Madelyn 126th, Evelyn back to 150th, Brooklyn 177th, Ashlyn 178th. Then Kaitlyn fell as fast as she had risen. The six spellings were 12,469 girls in 2008, 2,263 in 2017, and as one name they are 130th. Kaitlyn alone was 197th in 2015 and is 802nd now. Katelyn left the top 1,000 this year, Caitlyn in 2016.

Brooklyn, Adalynn, Raelynn and the second n

What replaced Kaitlyn was not one name. Brooklyn, 912th in 1990, led the ending in 2008 at 47th. In the full count for 2017 the ending was one girl in 23, 73,192 girls, and the biggest name in it was Evelyn again, 10,675 girls, 15% of the group and 9th in the country by count. Then Brooklyn 5,168, Madelyn 3,939, Adalynn 2,651, Raelynn 2,437, Adalyn 2,194, Jocelyn 1,828, Adelyn 1,511, Brooklynn 1,410, Adelynn 1,063 and Raelyn 1,019. Eleven names with 1,000 girls or more, 91 with 100 or more, and 1,597 spellings in all, against 332 in 1990.

Most of the growth is in the spelling. The one name spelled many ways is now Adalyn. Its best single spelling, Adalynn, was 116th in 2017, but Adalyn, Adalynn, Adelyn, Adelynn, Addilyn, Addilynn and six smaller spellings add up to 9,804 girls, which would be 12th in America, between Emily and Harper. Madelyn in six spellings would be 23rd, Brooklyn and Brooklynn 25th, Raelynn in three spellings 71st. And the second n is spreading: 12% of the girls with the ending were spelled lynn in 1990, 17% in 2000, 23% in 2008 and 33% in 2017.

The names themselves are new. Of the American girls given the ending in 2017, 22% had a name that was in the top 1,000 before 1900, mostly Evelyn and Madelyn, which was first listed in 1893. 34% had a name that was not in the top 1,000 in any year from 1880 to 2008: Adelynn, Raelyn, Evelynn, Gracelynn, Addilyn, Braelynn, Emmalyn, Oaklyn, Oaklynn. In the er article two thirds of the boys had a name from before 1900 and in the ia article two thirds of the girls did. This is the ending where the names are being made up as it goes.

Britain: Evelyn, and almost nothing else

In England and Wales in 2025, 2,180 girls had a name ending in lyn or lynn, one in 116, across 51 names. Evelyn was 1,560 of them, 72%, and 12th in the country. The only other name with the ending given to 50 or more girls was Adalyn, with exactly 50. Then Madelyn 47, Brooklyn 37, Everlyn 37, Adelyn 30, Evelynn 26, Rosalyn 25, Caitlyn 24, Gwendolyn 23, Kaitlyn 23, Marilyn 17, Jocelyn 15, Katelyn 12, Raelynn 11, Lynn 5. Carolyn, 10th in America in 1942, was given to fewer than three girls here and is not in the file. Only 101 girls, 5% of the group, had the ending spelled with two n's, against a third in America.

So the ending is five times more American per head, 43 girls per 1,000 there against 9 here, and the whole of the difference is the names America made: Adalyn is 6.5 times commoner there, 2,194 girls to 50, and Brooklyn, Madelyn, Raelynn, Adalynn and Jocelyn are all under 50 girls here. Evelyn is the exception, and she is exactly level: 10,675 of 1,711,811 American girls in 2017 and 1,560 of 253,281 English and Welsh girls in 2025 are both 6.2 in every 1,000. She is 8th there and 12th here, and she moved from 20th to 12th here between 2024 and 2025, up 48 girls in a year when girls' births fell 1.8%.

Boys get the ending in one name. In America in 2017 it was 1,498 boys, one in 1,225, and Flynn, with 309, was the only one given to 100 or more. In England and Wales it was 349 boys, one in 784, and Flynn was 218 of them, 227th for boys and 4.7 times commoner here per head than there. The rest are Welsh: Emlyn 25, Llewelyn 15, Celyn 7. And Brooklyn: 5,168 girls and 71 boys in America in 2017; 37 girls and 46 boys here in 2025, and 37 and 63 in 2024. In Britain Brooklyn is a boys' name, just.

Every name with the ending in the American girls' top 200 in 2025, the names that led the ending in earlier years, and Adalyn, Gwendolyn, Jocelyn and Lynn. The last column is the name's best American rank in any year we hold, and the year. “Out” means outside the top 1,000. We give no English and Welsh rank for a name under 50 girls, and names under three girls are not in the English and Welsh file at all. American girls are counted in 2017, the newest full count we hold.

Since 2015

On the American rankings the ending is thinning out, apart from Evelyn and the newest spellings. There were 52 names with the ending in the girls' top 1,000 in 2015 and there are 33 now. Three were in the top 100 in 2015, Evelyn 15th, Brooklyn 31st and Madelyn 59th, and two are now, Evelyn 8th and Madelyn 71st. Brooklyn has fallen in every one of the ten years, 31st to 118th. Jocelyn went from 133rd to 393rd, Kaitlyn 197th to 802nd, Adalynn 124th to 184th, Adalyn 132nd to 260th, Ashlyn 332nd to 972nd. Twenty-five names with the ending left the top 1,000, Katelyn, Caitlyn and Carolyn among them, and six came in, every one of them new to the list: Oaklynn, first listed in 2017 at 888th and 153rd now, Lakelynn, first listed in 2022 and 498th now, Oaklyn, Lakelyn, Emberlynn and Jaslyn. Raelynn got to 100th in 2022 and is 116th. Evelyn went 15th, 12th, 9th, was 9th or 10th in every year from 2017 to 2023, and has been 8th since 2024.

In England and Wales, where we hold two years, the ending went from one girl in 121 to one in 116, and all of that is Evelyn, 1,512 to 1,560. Everything else with the ending stayed under 50 girls. One year is not a trend and we do not call it one.

What we cannot tell you

Why. The files hold what parents wrote, and three letters do not have a reason. We can say that the ending has risen and fallen twice in America and risen again, that each rise was carried by different names, and that this rise is being carried by names that did not exist in the records before 2008. We cannot say why Carolyn went from 10th to out of the top 1,000 while Evelyn went from 288th to 8th. The rule counts letters, so it splits Madelyn from Madeline, which went to 2,938 American girls in 2017, Adalyn from Adeline, 3,902, Carolyn from Caroline, 4,270, and Kaitlyn from Caitlin, when many parents would hear them as the same name. It also counts Flynn, which nobody chose for its ending. The long American series is a floor: in 2008 it gives 27 girls per 1,000 and the full file gives 39, because most of the new spellings sit below the top 1,000, so the 1942 record of 30 and the 2017 figure of 43 are not measured the same way. We do not hold 2009 to 2014 for America. And we hold two British years, so Britain's own history of the ending, and whether Carolyn and Marilyn were ever big here, is not in this article.

What it means for you

If you like the sound of lyn, you are in a small company here and a large one in America. In England and Wales one girl in 116 has the ending and Evelyn is nearly three quarters of them, so an Evelyn will meet other Evelyns, 12th in the country, and a Madelyn, a Brooklyn or a Raelynn is one of fewer than 50 girls a year. In America it is the other way round: one girl in 23, eleven names with a thousand girls or more, and twelve spellings of Adalyn alone. If you want the ending and the history, Evelyn has been in the American top 300 in every one of the 140 years we hold, and Gwendolyn, 112th in America in 1951, was given to 23 girls here last year. Carolyn and Marilyn, 10th and 13th in America in their day, were given to fewer than three and 17 girls here in 2025. On the pattern in this data they are not due back yet.