Nelly
Nelly is a girl's name that peaked in 2007, when it was the 1,205th most popular in the United States. In 2025 it ranked 1,291st. About 7,000 Nellys are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 23.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Nelly boys named Nelly
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 7,871
- Estimated living today
- 7,000
- Median age today
- 23
- Peak year
- 2007
- Best rank
- 1,205th
- Rank in 2025
- 1,291st
- First recorded
- 1882
- Girls / boys
- 7,792 / 79
How old the living Nellys are
born that year still alive today
Of the 7,871 babies given the name since 1882, about 7,000 are alive — 89 in every hundred. Roughly 2,600 of them are children and 500 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 2002 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.
Notable Nellys
- Nelly Sachs (1891–1970)Jewish German poet and playwright
- Nelly Furtado (born 1978)Portuguese-Canadian singer and songwriter
- Nelly Ciobanu (born 1974)Moldovan singer
- Nelly Kaplan (1931–2020)French filmmaker and writer
- Nelly Korda (born 1998)American golfer
- Nelly Landry (1916–2010)Belgian-French tennis player
- Nelly Diener (1912–1934)Swiss flight attendant
- Nelly Roussel (1878–1922)French activist
People named Nelly with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Nelly is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Nelly is most concentrated in California (3.6×), Texas (3.0×), New York (2.4×), Illinois (1.5×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 2007
The most popular girls’ names the year Nelly peaked:
Nelly elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| France girls | Nelly | 70,495 | 64th |
| England and Wales girls | Nelly | 1,952 | 234th |
| Norway girls | Nelly | 866 | 130th |
| Poland girls | Nelly | 715 birth registrations | 122nd |
| Belgium girls | Nelly | 242 | 702nd |
| Switzerland girls | Nelly | 224 | 420th |
| Ireland girls | Nelly | 104 | 476th |
| Scotland girls | Nelly | 38 | 396th |
| France boys | Nelly | 15 | 5,660th |
| Northern Ireland girls | Nelly | 9 | 397th |
| England and Wales boys | Nelly | 8 | 2,754th |
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.
Nelly: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German girls | Switzerland | Nelly | 152 | 0.012% | 357th |
| French girls | Switzerland | Nelly | 70 | 0.016% | 282nd |
| Italian girls | Switzerland | Nelly | 2 | 0.003% | 196th |
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.
By canton, Nelly is most concentrated in Vaud, where 0.02% of children were given it – 30 of them.
Nelly: rank by region
In 2024, Nelly was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Nelly | 839 | 5 |
In 2025, Nelly was given 2 times or more in 5 regions of Poland.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mazowieckie | Nelly | 276 | 3 |
| Pomorskie | Nelly | 146 | 5 |
| Śląskie | Nelly | 255 | 2 |
| Warmińsko-Mazurskie | Nelly | 131 | 2 |
| Wielkopolskie | Nelly | 248 | 2 |
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children, Poland below 2 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.
Nelly by city
| City | Years | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin girls | 2017–2023 | 25 | 292nd |
One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.
Nelly 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| the Netherlands girls | Nelly | 4,250 | 6,357 |
| Finland girls | Nelly | 715 | 893 |
| the Netherlands boys | Nelly | — | 53 |
A count of people on a register – the Netherlands on 1 January 2018, 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.
Where Nelly lives in Spain
Not a count of births but of people: 1,520 women called Nelly were living in Spain on 1 January 2025, of every age, born in any year. Where they live is not spread evenly.
Women: the provinces where it is densest
| Province | Spelling | People | Per thousand | Place there |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Rioja, La | Nelly | 17 | 0.103 | 804 |
| Balears, Illes | Nelly | 56 | 0.089 | 854 |
| Navarra | Nelly | 30 | 0.087 | 901 |
| Barcelona | Nelly | 257 | 0.084 | 817 |
| Lleida | Nelly | 18 | 0.081 | 933 |
| Madrid | Nelly | 287 | 0.077 | 824 |
Listed in 45 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 7 it is either held by fewer than 5 people – the point below which the source withholds a name – or it fell past the 5,000 names the source will print for one province. Neither means nobody there is called it. The rate is the source's own, not a share worked out here.
Related names
Nelly 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.