Humanverse

Elian vs Elias

American parents have registered 129,502 Eliases since 1880, against 15,380 Elians. Elias is still ahead, with 8,845 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Elian 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 2000, when Elian had 583 and Elias had 1,408.

Side by side

  Elian Elias
Total US births 15,380129,502
Most in one year 2,4578,845
Babies in 2025 2,4578,845
Estimated living today 15,000121,000
Median age today 59
Peak year 20252025
Best rank 147th boys13th boys
Rank in 2025 147th13th
First recorded 19881880
Girls / boys 112 / 15,268239 / 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 Elians are over 5. 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 Elian Elias
France 4,04017,600
Norway 409,574
England and Wales 3687,787
Switzerland 5296,303
Belgium 3865,932
Italy 2633,582
Poland 54241

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: Elian and Elias.