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Elea vs Eleanor

American parents have registered 337,323 Eleanors since 1880, against 390 Eleas. Eleanor is still ahead, with 7,654 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Elea against Eleanor, 1880 to 2025 0 2.5k 5k 7.5k 10k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Elea Eleanor

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

Eleanor has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1880 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 1983, when Elea had 7 and Eleanor had 263.

Side by side

  Elea Eleanor
Total US births 390337,323
Most in one year 438,507
Babies in 2025 277,654
Estimated living today 390143,000
Median age today 711
Peak year 20231920
Best rank 3,585th girls25th girls
Rank in 2025 4,878th12th
First recorded 19831880
Girls / boys 390 / 0336,678 / 645

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 Eleanors alive today are over 11; half the Eleas are over 7. That is 4 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 Elea Eleanor
England and Wales 13341,352
France 15,8603,080
Switzerland 1,717273
Belgium 1,362 Eléa596

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: Elea and Eleanor.