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Elias vs Elyas

American parents have registered 129,502 Eliases since 1880, against 2,084 Elyases. Elias is still ahead, with 8,845 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Elias Elyas

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 2009, when Elias had 2,486 and Elyas had 58.

Side by side

  Elias Elyas
Total US births 129,5022,084
Most in one year 8,845164
Babies in 2025 8,845156
Estimated living today 121,0002,100
Median age today 97
Peak year 20252024
Best rank 13th boys1,224th boys
Rank in 2025 13th1,263rd
First recorded 18801988
Girls / boys 239 / 129,2630 / 2,084

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 Eliases alive today are over 9; half the Elyases are over 7. That is 2 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 Elyas
France 17,6004,650
England and Wales 7,787698
Switzerland 6,303396
Belgium 5,932387
Ireland 25010
Poland 2416
Scotland 23210

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 Elyas.