Humanverse

Ely vs Elynor

American parents have registered 5,087 Elys since 1880, against 502 Elynors. Ely is still ahead, with 65 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Ely Elynor

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 132 years in which either name was published, Ely for 120 years and Elynor for 12 years. The lead changed hands 14 times.

10 shorter spells of a year or two are folded into the spans above rather than listed separately.

Side by side

  Ely Elynor
Total US births 5,087502
Most in one year 17525
Babies in 2025 6511
Estimated living today 4,400120
Median age today 1812
Peak year 20091919
Best rank 1,148th boys1,604th girls
Rank in 2025 2,641st8,860th
First recorded 18801912
Girls / boys 616 / 4,471502 / 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 Elys alive today are over 18; half the Elynors are over 12. That is 6 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 Elynor
France 1,9955
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 Elynor.