Ilea vs Ilena

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Ilea Ilena

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 78 years in which either name was published, Ilena for 65 years and Ilea for 13 years. The lead changed hands 8 times.

• 1915–1979 Ilena ahead
• 1980–1987 Ilea ahead
• 1988 Ilena ahead
• 1989–1991 Ilea ahead
• 1992–1996 Ilena ahead
• 1997 Ilea ahead
• 1998–2000 Ilena ahead
• 2001 Ilea ahead
• 2002–2025 Ilena ahead

Side by side

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 Ileas alive today are over 35; half the Ilenas are over 22. That is 13 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.

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

• Ilea vs Ilene
• Ilea vs Ileana
• Ilea vs Ileen
• Ilea vs Ilean
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• Ilena vs Ileana
• Ilena vs Ileen
• Ilena vs Ilean