Humanverse

Ellanor vs Ellie

American parents have registered 106,857 Ellies since 1880, against 756 Ellanors. Ellie is still ahead, with 6,176 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Ellanor 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 1952, when Ellanor had 7 and Ellie had 57.

Side by side

  Ellanor Ellie
Total US births 756106,857
Most in one year 506,322
Babies in 2025 426,176
Estimated living today 680102,000
Median age today 88
Peak year 20212024
Best rank 3,215th girls21st girls
Rank in 2025 3,577th24th
First recorded 19131880
Girls / boys 756 / 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.

Both names abroad

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

Country Ellanor Ellie
England and Wales 9863,782

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: Ellanor and Ellie.