Lance comes from the Germanic name Lanzo, a short form of names beginning with lant, "land", though English speakers have always heard the knight's lance in it and connected it to Lancelot, the greatest of King Arthur's knights. It has a crisp, all-American ring and was a top 200 name from the 1960s through the 1990s. Lance was number 267 in 2000 and ranks number 862 among boys in 2025.