Humanverse

Elihu vs Elise

American parents have registered 75,252 Elises since 1880, against 1,236 Elihus. Elise is still ahead, with 1,367 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Elihu against Elise, 1880 to 2025 0 600 1.2k 1.8k 2.4k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Elihu 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

Elise 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 1881, when Elihu had 11 and Elise had 22.

Side by side

  Elihu Elise
Total US births 1,23675,252
Most in one year 262,126
Babies in 2025 141,367
Estimated living today 70067,000
Median age today 2121
Peak year 19282012
Best rank 1,448th boys152nd girls
Rank in 2025 6,143rd223rd
First recorded 18801880
Girls / boys 0 / 1,23675,186 / 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.

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 Elihu Elise
England and Wales 39,629

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: Elihu and Elise.