Humanverse

Eli vs Eliza

American parents have registered 154,512 Elis since 1880, against 70,771 Elizas. Eli is still ahead, with 3,453 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Eli Eliza

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 146 years in which either name was published, Eli for 80 years and Eliza for 66 years. The lead changed hands 7 times.

Side by side

  Eli Eliza
Total US births 154,51270,771
Most in one year 8,1102,490
Babies in 2025 3,4532,375
Estimated living today 143,00053,000
Median age today 1212
Peak year 20122021
Best rank 43rd boys111th girls
Rank in 2025 104th115th
First recorded 18801880
Girls / boys 1,017 / 153,49570,569 / 202

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.

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 Eli Eliza
England and Wales 8,64019,552
Poland 4214,735
Norway 7,256320
France 2,7302,215
Belgium 942840
New Zealand 1,523145
Ireland 897709
Switzerland 475713
Scotland 509583
Northern Ireland 537309

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: Eli and Eliza.