Humanverse

Elias vs Elif

American parents have registered 129,502 Eliases since 1880, against 1,534 Elifs. Elias is still ahead, with 8,845 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Elias Elif

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

Elias 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 1992, when Elias had 698 and Elif had 14.

Side by side

  Elias Elif
Total US births 129,5021,534
Most in one year 8,845115
Babies in 2025 8,845101
Estimated living today 121,0001,500
Median age today 99
Peak year 20252024
Best rank 13th boys1,753rd girls
Rank in 2025 13th1,911th
First recorded 18801977
Girls / boys 239 / 129,2631,534 / 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.

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 Elias Elif
France 17,6005,275
Austria 17,202292
Norway 9,57421
England and Wales 7,7871,321
Belgium 5,9321,642
Switzerland 6,303718
Italy 3,582294
Poland 24188
Ireland 25016
Scotland 23226

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: Elias and Elif.