Humanverse

Ellaina vs Ellie

American parents have registered 106,857 Ellies since 1880, against 634 Ellainas. Ellie is still ahead, with 6,176 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Ellaina against Ellie, 1880 to 2025 0 2k 4k 6k 8k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Ellaina Ellie

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

Ellie 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 1994, when Ellaina had 9 and Ellie had 252.

Side by side

  Ellaina Ellie
Total US births 634106,857
Most in one year 386,322
Babies in 2025 106,176
Estimated living today 630102,000
Median age today 138
Peak year 20112024
Best rank 3,916th girls21st girls
Rank in 2025 9,457th24th
First recorded 19911880
Girls / boys 634 / 0105,677 / 1,180

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 Ellainas alive today are over 13; half the Ellies are over 8. That is 5 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 Ellaina Ellie
England and Wales 363,782

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: Ellaina and Ellie.