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Elis vs Elise

American parents have registered 75,252 Elises since 1880, against 606 Elises. Elise is still ahead, with 1,367 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Elis 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 1911, when Elis had 5 and Elise had 77.

Side by side

  Elis Elise
Total US births 60675,252
Most in one year 352,126
Babies in 2025 271,367
Estimated living today 56067,000
Median age today 921
Peak year 20222012
Best rank 5,984th girls152nd girls
Rank in 2025 6,838th223rd
First recorded 19111880
Girls / boys 320 / 28675,186 / 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.

Which name is older

Half of the Elises alive today are over 21; half the Elises are over 9. That is 12 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Both names abroad

Countries whose statistics office publishes both names, so the comparison can be made somewhere other than the United States.

Country Elis Elise
France 130126,480
England and Wales 2,4179,629
Belgium 12110,696
Sweden 3,1673,836
Switzerland 1541,252
Scotland 331,338
Ireland 3564
Poland 537

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: Elis and Elise.