Humanverse

Elleigh vs Ellen

American parents have registered 276,029 Ellens since 1880, against 659 Elleighs. Ellen is still ahead, with 230 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Elleigh against Ellen, 1880 to 2025 0 1.5k 3k 4.5k 6k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Elleigh Ellen

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

Ellen 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 2025, when Elleigh had 38 and Ellen had 230.

Side by side

  Elleigh Ellen
Total US births 659276,029
Most in one year 455,956
Babies in 2025 38230
Estimated living today 660151,000
Median age today 966
Peak year 20201951
Best rank 3,399th girls68th girls
Rank in 2025 3,832nd1,062nd
First recorded 20011880
Girls / boys 659 / 0275,284 / 745

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 Ellens alive today are over 66; half the Elleighs are over 9. That is 57 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 Elleigh Ellen
England and Wales 388,819

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: Elleigh and Ellen.