Telia vs Telly

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Telia Telly

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 67 years in which either name was published, Telia for 35 years and Telly for 32 years. The lead changed hands 22 times.

• 1921–1966 Telia ahead
• 1972–1983 Telly ahead
• 1984–1992 Telia ahead
• 1993–2003 Telly ahead, apart from one short spell
• 2006–2010 Telia ahead

17 shorter spells of a year or two are folded into the spans above rather than listed separately.

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 Tellys alive today are over 49; half the Telias are over 32. That is 17 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

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