Humanverse

Elleanor vs Ellie

American parents have registered 106,857 Ellies since 1880, against 719 Elleanors. Ellie is still ahead, with 6,176 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Elleanor 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 1935, when Elleanor had 6 and Ellie had 59.

Side by side

  Elleanor Ellie
Total US births 719106,857
Most in one year 576,322
Babies in 2025 486,176
Estimated living today 680102,000
Median age today 78
Peak year 20202024
Best rank 2,850th girls21st girls
Rank in 2025 3,249th24th
First recorded 19151880
Girls / boys 719 / 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 Elleanor Ellie
England and Wales 19663,782

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: Elleanor and Ellie.