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Elise vs Elizabeth

American parents have registered 1,693,973 Elizabeths since 1880, against 75,252 Elises. Elizabeth is still ahead, with 6,765 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Elise 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 2012, when Elise had 2,126 and Elizabeth had 9,738.

Side by side

  Elise Elizabeth
Total US births 75,2521,693,973
Most in one year 2,12620,841
Babies in 2025 1,3676,765
Estimated living today 67,0001.1 million
Median age today 2142
Peak year 20121990
Best rank 152nd girls9th girls
Rank in 2025 223rd17th
First recorded 18801880
Girls / boys 75,186 / 661,688,757 / 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 Elises are over 21. That is 21 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 Elizabeth
France 126,4804,935
England and Wales 9,62939,849
Ireland 56415,078
New Zealand 4812,204
Belgium 10,696564
Norway 7,8891,243
Scotland 1,3386,495
Switzerland 1,252223
Northern Ireland 174708
Poland 37340

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 Elizabeth.