Humanverse

Ely vs Elyzabeth

American parents have registered 5,087 Elys since 1880, against 566 Elyzabeths. Ely is still ahead, with 65 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Ely Elyzabeth

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

Ely 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 1998, when Ely had 62 and Elyzabeth had 17.

Side by side

  Ely Elyzabeth
Total US births 5,087566
Most in one year 17530
Babies in 2025 658
Estimated living today 4,400560
Median age today 1817
Peak year 20092011
Best rank 1,148th boys4,681st girls
Rank in 2025 2,641st10,917th
First recorded 18801978
Girls / boys 616 / 4,471566 / 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.

Both names abroad

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

Country Ely Elyzabeth
France 1,9955

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 Elyzabeth.