Humanverse

Eli vs Eliel

American parents have registered 154,512 Elis since 1880, against 4,931 Eliels. Eli is still ahead, with 3,453 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Eli Eliel

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 Eliel had 503.

Side by side

  Eli Eliel
Total US births 154,5124,931
Most in one year 8,110503
Babies in 2025 3,453503
Estimated living today 143,0004,900
Median age today 126
Peak year 20122025
Best rank 43rd boys585th boys
Rank in 2025 104th585th
First recorded 18801975
Girls / boys 1,017 / 153,4959 / 4,922

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 Eliels 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 Eliel
England and Wales 8,64093
France 2,730730
Belgium 94219
Switzerland 47588

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 Eliel.