Humanverse

Eliane vs Elijah

American parents have registered 381,915 Elijahs since 1880, against 619 Elianes. Elijah is still ahead, with 11,126 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Eliane against Elijah, 1880 to 2025 0 4k 8k 12k 16k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Eliane Elijah

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

Elijah 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 1966, when Eliane had 10 and Elijah had 140.

Side by side

  Eliane Elijah
Total US births 619381,915
Most in one year 4114,034
Babies in 2025 2811,126
Estimated living today 600366,000
Median age today 1714
Peak year 20222011
Best rank 3,703rd girls13th boys
Rank in 2025 4,758th7th
First recorded 19241880
Girls / boys 619 / 01,304 / 380,611

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 Elianes alive today are over 17; half the Elijahs are over 14. That is 3 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 Eliane Elijah
France 114,1854,455
England and Wales 9724,043
Switzerland 813662
Belgium 55696

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: Eliane and Elijah.