Nelly vs Nelva
American parents have registered 7,871 Nellys since 1880, against 1,139 Nelvas. Nelly is still ahead, with 182 babies in 2025.
Babies given each name, 1880–2025
Nelly Nelva
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 137 years in which either name was published, Nelly for 108 years and Nelva for 29 years. The lead changed hands 18 times.
- 1882–1908 Nelly ahead, apart from one short spell
- 1914–1916 Nelva ahead
- 1917–1920 Nelly ahead
- 1923–1925 Nelva ahead
- 1926–1928 Nelly ahead
- 1929–1944 Nelva ahead
- 1950–2025 Nelly ahead
11 shorter spells of a year or two are folded into the spans above rather than listed separately.
Side by side
| Nelly | Nelva | |
|---|---|---|
| Total US births | 7,871 | 1,139 |
| Most in one year | 213 | 44 |
| Babies in 2025 | 182 | under 5 |
| Estimated living today | 7,000 | 380 |
| Median age today | 23 | 77 |
| Peak year | 2007 | 1935 |
| Best rank | 1,205th girls | 1,039th girls |
| Rank in 2025 | 1,291st | unranked |
| First recorded | 1882 | 1889 |
| Girls / boys | 7,792 / 79 | 1,139 / 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 Nelvas alive today are over 77; half the Nellys are over 23. That is 54 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 | Nelva |
|---|---|---|
| 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 Nelva.