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Eleanore vs Elenore

American parents have registered 18,724 Eleanores since 1880, against 1,806 Elenores. Eleanore is still ahead, with 156 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Eleanore against Elenore, 1880 to 2025 0 200 400 600 800 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Eleanore 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

Eleanore 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 1965, when Eleanore had 10 and Elenore had 9.

Side by side

  Eleanore Elenore
Total US births 18,7241,806
Most in one year 76882
Babies in 2025 15616
Estimated living today 4,100550
Median age today 3414
Peak year 19211924
Best rank 235th girls822nd girls
Rank in 2025 1,396th6,838th
First recorded 18801887
Girls / boys 18,724 / 01,806 / 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 Eleanores alive today are over 34; half the Elenores are over 14. That is 20 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 Eleanore Elenore
France 3,250 Eléanore15
Belgium 378 Eléanore5
England and Wales 14923

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: Eleanore and Elenore.