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Elias vs Elizabeth

American parents have registered 1,693,973 Elizabeths since 1880, against 129,502 Eliases. But in 2025 it was Elias that was commoner, 8,845 babies to 6,765.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Elias against Elizabeth, 1880 to 2025 0 6k 12k 18k 24k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Elias Elizabeth

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, Elizabeth for 143 years and Elias for 3 years. The lead changed hands once.

Side by side

  Elias Elizabeth
Total US births 129,5021,693,973
Most in one year 8,84520,841
Babies in 2025 8,8456,765
Estimated living today 121,0001.1 million
Median age today 942
Peak year 20251990
Best rank 13th boys9th girls
Rank in 2025 13th17th
First recorded 18801880
Girls / boys 239 / 129,2631,688,757 / 5,216

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 Elizabeths alive today are over 42; half the Eliases are over 9. That is 33 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 Elizabeth
England and Wales 7,78739,849
France 17,6004,935
Ireland 25015,078
New Zealand 5312,204
Norway 9,5741,243
Scotland 2326,495
Switzerland 6,303223
Belgium 5,932564
Italy 3,5821,120
Northern Ireland 96708
Poland 241340

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 Elizabeth.