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Ely vs Elyce

American parents have registered 5,087 Elys since 1880, against 830 Elyces. Ely is still ahead, with 65 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Ely against Elyce, 1880 to 2025 0 50 100 150 200 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Ely Elyce

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 133 years in which either name was published, Ely for 117 years and Elyce for 16 years. The lead changed hands 8 times.

Side by side

  Ely Elyce
Total US births 5,087830
Most in one year 17528
Babies in 2025 657
Estimated living today 4,400770
Median age today 1836
Peak year 20091987
Best rank 1,148th boys3,257th girls
Rank in 2025 2,641st11,932nd
First recorded 18801945
Girls / boys 616 / 4,471830 / 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 Elyces alive today are over 36; half the Elys are over 18. That is 18 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Both names abroad

Countries whose statistics office publishes both names, so the comparison can be made somewhere other than the United States.

Country Ely Elyce
England and Wales 1613

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: Ely and Elyce.