Humanverse

Elias vs Elise

American parents have registered 129,502 Eliases since 1880, against 75,252 Elises. Elias is still ahead, with 8,845 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Elias Elise

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 146 years in which either name was published, Elise for 84 years and Elias for 62 years. The lead changed hands 16 times.

9 shorter spells of a year or two are folded into the spans above rather than listed separately.

Side by side

  Elias Elise
Total US births 129,50275,252
Most in one year 8,8452,126
Babies in 2025 8,8451,367
Estimated living today 121,00067,000
Median age today 921
Peak year 20252012
Best rank 13th boys152nd girls
Rank in 2025 13th223rd
First recorded 18801880
Girls / boys 239 / 129,26375,186 / 66

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 Elises alive today are over 21; half the Eliases are over 9. That is 12 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 Elias Elise
France 17,600126,480
Sweden 19,1643,836
Norway 9,5747,889
England and Wales 7,7879,629
Belgium 5,93210,696
Switzerland 6,3031,252
Scotland 2321,338
Ireland 250564
Poland 24137
Northern Ireland 96174
New Zealand 5348

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 Elise.