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Elana vs Elaya

American parents have registered 8,909 Elanas since 1880, against 517 Elayas. Elana is still ahead, with 97 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Elana against Elaya, 1880 to 2025 0 60 120 180 240 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Elana Elaya

Each line is every baby given the name that year, girls and boys added together — the only count that means the same thing for both names. A line breaks where the name fell below five babies in a year — the point at which the SSA stops publishing it — rather than being drawn through a figure nobody published. A single published year in a gap shows as a dot.

Who was ahead

Elana has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1934 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2025, when Elana had 97 and Elaya had 89.

Side by side

  Elana Elaya
Total US births 8,909517
Most in one year 21989
Babies in 2025 9789
Estimated living today 8,500510
Median age today 284
Peak year 20062025
Best rank 1,130th girls2,099th girls
Rank in 2025 1,981st2,099th
First recorded 19342004
Girls / boys 8,909 / 0517 / 0

A rank is a position within one sex’s list for one year, so the two rank rows are not subtracted from one another and the winning column is not marked on them. The living figure is a life-table estimate, not a count.

Which name is older

Half of the Elanas alive today are over 28; half the Elayas are over 4. That is 24 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Where each one is strongest

How much commoner the name is in that state than it is nationally, from births recorded since 1910.

Both names abroad

Countries whose statistics office publishes both names, so the comparison can be made somewhere other than the United States.

Country Elana Elaya
France 780410
England and Wales 711215
Switzerland 5493
Belgium 7320
Northern Ireland 33

Every spelling a country files separately is added together, over whatever years that country publishes — which is not the same range in any two of them, so read the columns against each other and not the rows.

Compare something else

Related comparisons

Social Security Administration birth records, 1880–2025, public domain. Full histories: Elana and Elaya.