Nelle vs Nelma

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Nelle Nelma

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 115 years in which either name was published, Nelle for 93 years and Nelma for 22 years. The lead changed hands 8 times.

• 1880–1927 Nelle ahead
• 1928 Nelma ahead
• 1929–1931 Nelle ahead
• 1932–1942 Nelma ahead
• 1943–1944 Nelle ahead
• 1945–1952 Nelma ahead
• 1953–1958 Nelle ahead
• 1959–1960 Nelma ahead
• 1961–2025 Nelle 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 Nelmas alive today are over 82; half the Nelles are over 16. That is 66 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Where each one is strongest

• Nelle Tennessee (11.7×), Georgia (6.5×), South Carolina (5.6×)
• Nelma Texas (7.5×)

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

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