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Eleanor vs Elenore

American parents have registered 337,323 Eleanors since 1880, against 1,806 Elenores. Eleanor is still ahead, with 7,654 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Eleanor against Elenore, 1880 to 2025 0 2.5k 5k 7.5k 10k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Eleanor Elenore

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

Eleanor has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1880 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 1978, when Eleanor had 269 and Elenore had 6.

Side by side

  Eleanor Elenore
Total US births 337,3231,806
Most in one year 8,50782
Babies in 2025 7,65416
Estimated living today 143,000550
Median age today 1114
Peak year 19201924
Best rank 25th girls822nd girls
Rank in 2025 12th6,838th
First recorded 18801887
Girls / boys 336,678 / 6451,806 / 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 Elenores alive today are over 14; half the Eleanors are over 11. That is 3 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 Eleanor Elenore
England and Wales 41,35223
France 3,08015
Belgium 5965

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: Eleanor and Elenore.