Ely
Ely is a boy's name that peaked in 2009, when it was the 1,148th most popular in the United States. In 2025 it ranked 2,641st. About 4,400 Elys are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 18.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Ely boys named Ely
Girls and boys called Ely
years more girls than boys years more boys than girls
Both, throughout, without either side ever taking it over: 616 girls and 4,471 boys in all, and in 2025 the split was 16 to 49.
The girls’ share of each year’s babies of the name, in the 53 years in which at least 25 babies got it. The line touches the middle more often than there are crossings marked: a year or two on the other side is not a name changing hands, and only a move that holds for 5 counted years and reaches 60/40 is recorded as one. All 581 names that changed sex.
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 5,087
- Estimated living today
- 4,400
- Median age today
- 18
- Peak year
- 2009
- Best rank
- 1,148th
- Rank in 2025
- 2,641st
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 616 / 4,471
How old the living Elys are
born that year still alive today
Of the 5,087 babies given the name since 1880, about 4,400 are alive — 86 in every hundred. Roughly 2,000 of them are children and 110 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 2007 and half after.
An estimate, not a count. SSA births aged forward through SSA cohort life tables, which know nothing about who left the country or arrived in it — so for a name that mostly came to America rather than being born in it, this is a floor rather than a figure. Where you fall among living Americans.
Where the name comes from
from Old English Ēlīġ, of uncertain origin.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Elys
- Ely Ould Mohamed Vall (1953–2017)Mauritanian President
- Ely do Amparo (1921–1991)Brazilian footballer
- Alfred Ely Beach (1826–1896)American businessman
- Ely Tacchella (1936–2017)Swiss footballer
- Ely Galleani (born 1953)Italian actress, active years 1970 to 1978
- Ely S. Parker (1828–1895)Union Army officer and a Commissioner of Indian Affairs
- Ely Culbertson (1891–1955)American contract bridge entrepreneur
- Ely Pouget (born 1960)American actress and model
People named Ely with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Ely is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Ely is most concentrated in Texas (3.2×), California (3.0×), New York (2.6×), Florida (1.5×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 2009
The most popular boys’ names the year Ely peaked:
Ely elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| France boys | Ely +1 spelling | 1,240 | 728th |
| France girls | Ely +1 spelling | 755 | 499th |
| England and Wales boys | Ely | 161 | 1,724th |
| Belgium boys | Ely | 103 | 623rd |
| Switzerland girls | Ely | 41 | 756th |
| Belgium girls | Ely | 37 | 660th |
| Ireland boys | Ely | 15 | 534th |
Counts come from each country's own records and are not comparable with the US figures above, which cover different years and a different definition of a recorded name. Where a country writes the name several ways, the spellings are added together and the most common is shown. A row marked name registrations is counting something else: Portugal ranks each of a child's two given names separately, so a girl registered Maria Leonor is in both the Maria row and the Leonor row, and that figure is not a number of children.
Ely: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German girls | Switzerland | Ely | 14 | 0.001% | 1,164th |
| French girls | Switzerland | Ely | 27 | 0.006% | 306th |
Parts of a country counted above, not extra births. The share is what makes the regions comparable: they differ in size by a factor of three hundred.
Ely: rank by region
In 2025, Ely was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wallonia | Ely | 206 | 14 |
In 2025, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Ely appears in the lists for Province of Liège (183rd).
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children – and published nothing after. So a region missing here is one where the name fell outside what was published, not one where it went unused. Places are shared where names tie, and the further down a list a place is, the more names can share it.
Ely among the living
How many people each country's register counts under the name, rather than how many were given it in any one year. Each register was read on one date, and they are not the same date.
| Country | Spelling | First forename | Any forename |
|---|---|---|---|
| Finland girls | Ely | — | 5 |
A count of people on a register – Finland on 4 August 2026 – and not of births, so it cannot be compared with the figures above. Names with very few bearers are withheld, and a dash in the first-forename column means the register would not say rather than that nobody goes by it.
Related names
Ely against another name
Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.
Try it on yourself
Source: US Social Security Administration, national and state baby-name files, 1880–2025. Counts include only births registered with the SSA, and names with fewer than five births in a year are not published. The living estimate applies SSA cohort life tables to those births; it counts people born in the United States, so it misses anyone who arrived later and anyone who has left.