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Elijah vs Elisabet

American parents have registered 381,915 Elijahs since 1880, against 1,520 Elisabets. Elijah is still ahead, with 11,126 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Elijah Elisabet

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 1972, when Elijah had 209 and Elisabet had 16.

Side by side

  Elijah Elisabet
Total US births 381,9151,520
Most in one year 14,03451
Babies in 2025 11,12611
Estimated living today 366,0001,500
Median age today 1429
Peak year 20111989
Best rank 13th boys2,304th girls
Rank in 2025 7th8,860th
First recorded 18801961
Girls / boys 1,304 / 380,6111,520 / 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 Elisabets alive today are over 29; half the Elijahs are over 14. That is 15 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 Elijah Elisabet
England and Wales 24,0437
France 4,45560
Poland 424

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: Elijah and Elisabet.