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Elise vs Eliza

American parents have registered 75,252 Elises since 1880, against 70,771 Elizas. But in 2025 it was Eliza that was commoner, 2,375 babies to 1,367.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Elise against Eliza, 1880 to 2025 0 800 1.6k 2.4k 3.2k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Elise Eliza

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

Of the 146 years in which either name was published, Eliza for 76 years and Elise for 70 years. The lead changed hands 2 times.

Side by side

  Elise Eliza
Total US births 75,25270,771
Most in one year 2,1262,490
Babies in 2025 1,3672,375
Estimated living today 67,00053,000
Median age today 2112
Peak year 20122021
Best rank 152nd girls111th girls
Rank in 2025 223rd115th
First recorded 18801880
Girls / boys 75,186 / 6670,569 / 202

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 Elizas are over 12. That is 9 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 Elise Eliza
France 126,4802,215
England and Wales 9,62919,552
Poland 3714,735
Belgium 10,696840
Norway 7,889320
Switzerland 1,252713
Scotland 1,338583
Ireland 564709
Northern Ireland 174309
New Zealand 48145

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: Elise and Eliza.