Humanverse

Elena vs Elenora

American parents have registered 108,117 Elenas since 1880, against 3,661 Elenoras. Elena is still ahead, with 4,842 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Elena against Elenora, 1880 to 2025 0 1.3k 2.5k 3.8k 5k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Elena Elenora

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, Elena for 127 years and Elenora for 18 years. The lead changed hands 12 times.

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

Side by side

  Elena Elenora
Total US births 108,1173,661
Most in one year 4,842119
Babies in 2025 4,84246
Estimated living today 99,000980
Median age today 1339
Peak year 20251917
Best rank 42nd girls627th girls
Rank in 2025 42nd3,342nd
First recorded 18801880
Girls / boys 108,013 / 1043,661 / 0

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 Elenoras alive today are over 39; half the Elenas are over 13. That is 26 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 Elena Elenora
Italy 58,397100
England and Wales 8,54144
Belgium 7,6135
Switzerland 6,68118

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: Elena and Elenora.