Humanverse

Ella vs Ellana

American parents have registered 352,214 Ellas since 1880, against 598 Ellanas. Ella is still ahead, with 5,831 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Ella against Ellana, 1880 to 2025 0 2.5k 5k 7.5k 10k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Ella Ellana

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

Ella 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 1989, when Ella had 165 and Ellana had 8.

Side by side

  Ella Ellana
Total US births 352,214598
Most in one year 9,89829
Babies in 2025 5,8319
Estimated living today 226,000590
Median age today 1415
Peak year 20102010
Best rank 13th girls4,860th girls
Rank in 2025 29th10,107th
First recorded 18801946
Girls / boys 351,313 / 901598 / 0

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.

Both names abroad

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

Country Ella Ellana
England and Wales 69,984152
France 11,530395
Belgium 6,8718
Switzerland 3,49013

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: Ella and Ellana.