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Elli vs Ellie

American parents have registered 106,857 Ellies since 1880, against 2,798 Ellis. Ellie is still ahead, with 6,176 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Elli 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 1971, when Elli had 11 and Ellie had 30.

Side by side

  Elli Ellie
Total US births 2,798106,857
Most in one year 1216,322
Babies in 2025 566,176
Estimated living today 2,800102,000
Median age today 168
Peak year 20142024
Best rank 1,728th girls21st girls
Rank in 2025 2,957th24th
First recorded 19551880
Girls / boys 2,763 / 35105,677 / 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 Ellis alive today are over 16; half the Ellies are over 8. That is 8 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 Elli Ellie
England and Wales 49263,782
Scotland 597,913
France 1406,415
Ireland 75,731
Belgium 1332,266
Norway 441,500
Switzerland 1701,041
Poland 457

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: Elli and Ellie.