Ilya vs Ilyssa

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Ilya Ilyssa

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 56 years in which either name was published, Ilya for 30 years and Ilyssa for 26 years. The lead changed hands 10 times.

• 1961 Ilya ahead
• 1965 Ilyssa ahead
• 1966 Ilya ahead
• 1967–1968 Ilyssa ahead
• 1969–1974 Ilya ahead
• 1975–1998 Ilyssa ahead
• 1999–2003 Ilya ahead
• 2004 Ilyssa ahead
• 2005 Ilya ahead
• 2006 Ilyssa ahead
• 2007–2025 Ilya 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 Ilyssas alive today are over 26; half the Ilyas are over 11. That is 15 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Where each one is strongest

• Ilya Washington (9.3×), California (5.7×), New York (2.0×)
• Ilyssa New York (8.5×), California (2.5×)

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.

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

• Ilya vs Ilyas
• Ilya vs Ilyana
• Ilya vs Ily
• Ilyssa vs Ilyas
• Ilyssa vs Ilyana
• Ilyssa vs Ily