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Eliana vs Elissa

American parents have registered 76,146 Elianas since 1880, against 18,033 Elissas. Eliana is still ahead, with 8,196 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Eliana Elissa

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

Of the 106 years in which either name was published, Elissa for 77 years and Eliana for 29 years. The lead changed hands 3 times.

Side by side

  Eliana Elissa
Total US births 76,14618,033
Most in one year 8,196408
Babies in 2025 8,196108
Estimated living today 76,00017,000
Median age today 735
Peak year 20251979
Best rank 10th girls496th girls
Rank in 2025 10th1,844th
First recorded 19611914
Girls / boys 76,104 / 4218,033 / 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 Elissas alive today are over 35; half the Elianas are over 7. That is 28 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 Eliana Elissa
England and Wales 4,5921,775
France 3,9351,755
Belgium 916330
Switzerland 987139
Scotland 19388
Poland 2429
Ireland 18225

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: Eliana and Elissa.