Humanverse

Eli vs Elianna

American parents have registered 154,512 Elis since 1880, against 13,497 Eliannas. Eli is still ahead, with 3,453 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Eli Elianna

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

Eli 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 2025, when Eli had 3,453 and Elianna had 1,404.

Side by side

  Eli Elianna
Total US births 154,51213,497
Most in one year 8,1101,404
Babies in 2025 3,4531,404
Estimated living today 143,00013,000
Median age today 126
Peak year 20122025
Best rank 43rd boys218th girls
Rank in 2025 104th218th
First recorded 18801978
Girls / boys 1,017 / 153,49513,497 / 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 Elis alive today are over 12; half the Eliannas are over 6. That is 6 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 Eli Elianna
England and Wales 8,640357
France 2,730235
Belgium 9427
Ireland 89724
Northern Ireland 5373
Scotland 5098
Poland 422

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: Eli and Elianna.