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Eligh vs Elizabeth

American parents have registered 1,693,973 Elizabeths since 1880, against 1,019 Elighs. Elizabeth is still ahead, with 6,765 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Eligh 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

Elizabeth 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 2014, when Eligh had 61 and Elizabeth had 9,606.

Side by side

  Eligh Elizabeth
Total US births 1,0191,693,973
Most in one year 6120,841
Babies in 2025 66,765
Estimated living today 8001.1 million
Median age today 1342
Peak year 20141990
Best rank 2,205th boys9th girls
Rank in 2025 10,695th17th
First recorded 19061880
Girls / boys 0 / 1,0191,688,757 / 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 Elighs are over 13. That is 29 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 Eligh Elizabeth
England and Wales 9439,849

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: Eligh and Elizabeth.