Humanverse

Elliot vs Ellyn

American parents have registered 65,600 Elliots since 1880, against 3,836 Ellyns. Elliot is still ahead, with 2,658 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Elliot against Ellyn, 1880 to 2025 0 800 1.6k 2.4k 3.2k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Elliot 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 136 years in which either name was published, Elliot for 135 years and Ellyn for 1 year. The lead changed hands 2 times.

Side by side

  Elliot Ellyn
Total US births 65,6003,836
Most in one year 2,932102
Babies in 2025 2,6587
Estimated living today 61,0003,000
Median age today 1149
Peak year 20221991
Best rank 150th boys1,517th girls
Rank in 2025 151st11,932nd
First recorded 18801898
Girls / boys 7,008 / 58,5923,836 / 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 Elliots are over 11. That is 38 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 Elliot Ellyn
England and Wales 24,17786
France 9,315760
Scotland 1,85116
Belgium 1,21413

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: Elliot and Ellyn.