Nelly vs Nelma
American parents have registered 7,871 Nellys since 1880, against 1,229 Nelmas. Nelly is still ahead, with 182 babies in 2025.
Babies given each name, 1880–2025
Nelly 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 136 years in which either name was published, Nelly for 103 years and Nelma for 33 years. The lead changed hands 10 times.
Side by side
| Nelly | Nelma | |
|---|---|---|
| Total US births | 7,871 | 1,229 |
| Most in one year | 213 | 50 |
| Babies in 2025 | 182 | under 5 |
| Estimated living today | 7,000 | 270 |
| Median age today | 23 | 82 |
| Peak year | 2007 | 1926 |
| Best rank | 1,205th girls | 1,054th girls |
| Rank in 2025 | 1,291st | unranked |
| First recorded | 1882 | 1907 |
| Girls / boys | 7,792 / 79 | 1,229 / 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 Nelmas alive today are over 82; half the Nellys are over 23. That is 59 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.
Where each one is strongest
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.
| Country | Nelly | Nelma |
|---|---|---|
| France | 70,510 | 5 |
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: Nelly and Nelma.