Humanverse

Eliam vs Elias

American parents have registered 129,502 Eliases since 1880, against 4,439 Eliams. Elias is still ahead, with 8,845 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Eliam Elias

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

Elias 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 2025, when Eliam had 1,085 and Elias had 8,845.

Side by side

  Eliam Elias
Total US births 4,439129,502
Most in one year 1,0858,845
Babies in 2025 1,0858,845
Estimated living today 4,400121,000
Median age today 29
Peak year 20252025
Best rank 313th boys13th boys
Rank in 2025 313th13th
First recorded 20001880
Girls / boys 0 / 4,439239 / 129,263

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 Eliases alive today are over 9; half the Eliams are over 2. That is 7 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 Eliam Elias
France 1,08517,600
England and Wales 607,787
Switzerland 1406,303
Belgium 755,932

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: Eliam and Elias.