Humanverse

Ellie vs Ellyn

American parents have registered 106,857 Ellies since 1880, against 3,836 Ellyns. Ellie is still ahead, with 6,176 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Ellie Ellyn

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

Of the 146 years in which either name was published, Ellie for 132 years and Ellyn for 14 years. The lead changed hands 6 times.

Side by side

  Ellie Ellyn
Total US births 106,8573,836
Most in one year 6,322102
Babies in 2025 6,1767
Estimated living today 102,0003,000
Median age today 849
Peak year 20241991
Best rank 21st girls1,517th girls
Rank in 2025 24th11,932nd
First recorded 18801898
Girls / boys 105,677 / 1,1803,836 / 0

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 Ellyns alive today are over 49; half the Ellies are over 8. That is 41 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 Ellie Ellyn
England and Wales 63,78286
Scotland 7,91316
France 6,415760
Belgium 2,26613

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: Ellie and Ellyn.