Zelda vs Zelia

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Zelda Zelia

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 145 years in which either name was published, Zelda for 143 years and Zelia for 2 years. The lead changed hands 4 times.

• 1880–1882 Zelda ahead
• 1883 Zelia ahead
• 1884–1886 Zelda ahead
• 1887 Zelia ahead
• 1888–2025 Zelda 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 Zelias alive today are over 13; half the Zeldas are over 11. That is 2 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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