Humanverse

Elli vs Ellis

American parents have registered 57,731 Ellises since 1880, against 2,798 Ellis. Ellis is still ahead, with 1,832 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Elli 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 2002, when Elli had 95 and Ellis had 217.

Side by side

  Elli Ellis
Total US births 2,79857,731
Most in one year 1211,832
Babies in 2025 561,832
Estimated living today 2,80035,000
Median age today 1612
Peak year 20142025
Best rank 1,728th girls243rd boys
Rank in 2025 2,957th243rd
First recorded 19551880
Girls / boys 2,763 / 357,328 / 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 Ellis alive today are over 16; half the Ellises are over 12. That is 4 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 Ellis
England and Wales 49221,466
Scotland 592,081
Belgium 1331,243
France 140185
Switzerland 170133
Ireland 7247

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 Ellis.