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Ellery vs Ellis

American parents have registered 57,731 Ellises since 1880, against 7,005 Ellerys. Ellis is still ahead, with 1,832 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Ellery against Ellis, 1880 to 2025 0 500 1k 1.5k 2k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Ellery Ellis

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

Ellis 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 2006, when Ellery had 168 and Ellis had 367.

Side by side

  Ellery Ellis
Total US births 7,00557,731
Most in one year 2701,832
Babies in 2025 1961,832
Estimated living today 6,10035,000
Median age today 1412
Peak year 20142025
Best rank 1,018th girls243rd boys
Rank in 2025 1,207th243rd
First recorded 18821880
Girls / boys 4,744 / 2,2617,328 / 50,403

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 Ellerys alive today are over 14; half the Ellises are over 12. That is 2 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 Ellery Ellis
England and Wales 20621,466

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: Ellery and Ellis.