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
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.
- 1880–1887 Elias ahead
- 1891–1924 Elise ahead
- 1925–1934 Elias ahead
- 1935–1973 Elise ahead, apart from one short spell
- 1974–1981 Elias ahead
- 1982–1993 Elise ahead
- 1998–2025 Elias ahead
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 | 129,502 | 75,252 |
| Most in one year | 8,845 | 2,126 |
| Babies in 2025 | 8,845 | 1,367 |
| Estimated living today | 121,000 | 67,000 |
| Median age today | 9 | 21 |
| Peak year | 2025 | 2012 |
| Best rank | 13th boys | 152nd girls |
| Rank in 2025 | 13th | 223rd |
| First recorded | 1880 | 1880 |
| Girls / boys | 239 / 129,263 | 75,186 / 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
- Elias New Mexico (2.9×), Alaska (2.8×), Nevada (2.7×)
- Elise Utah (2.0×), Washington (1.7×), Colorado (1.6×)
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 | 17,600 | 126,480 |
| Sweden | 19,164 | 3,836 |
| Norway | 9,574 | 7,889 |
| England and Wales | 7,787 | 9,629 |
| Belgium | 5,932 | 10,696 |
| Switzerland | 6,303 | 1,252 |
| Scotland | 232 | 1,338 |
| Ireland | 250 | 564 |
| Poland | 241 | 37 |
| Northern Ireland | 96 | 174 |
| New Zealand | 53 | 48 |
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.