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Eliel vs Elijah

American parents have registered 381,915 Elijahs since 1880, against 4,931 Eliels. Elijah is still ahead, with 11,126 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Eliel against Elijah, 1880 to 2025 0 4k 8k 12k 16k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Eliel Elijah

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

Elijah 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 2025, when Eliel had 503 and Elijah had 11,126.

Side by side

  Eliel Elijah
Total US births 4,931381,915
Most in one year 50314,034
Babies in 2025 50311,126
Estimated living today 4,900366,000
Median age today 614
Peak year 20252011
Best rank 585th boys13th boys
Rank in 2025 585th7th
First recorded 19751880
Girls / boys 9 / 4,9221,304 / 380,611

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 Elijahs alive today are over 14; half the Eliels are over 6. That is 8 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 Eliel Elijah
England and Wales 9324,043
France 7304,455
Switzerland 88662
Belgium 19696

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: Eliel and Elijah.