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Elijah vs Elyjah

American parents have registered 381,915 Elijahs since 1880, against 1,961 Elyjahs. Elijah is still ahead, with 11,126 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Elijah Elyjah

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 2012, when Elijah had 13,942 and Elyjah had 124.

Side by side

  Elijah Elyjah
Total US births 381,9151,961
Most in one year 14,034124
Babies in 2025 11,12652
Estimated living today 366,0001,900
Median age today 1414
Peak year 20112012
Best rank 13th boys1,359th boys
Rank in 2025 7th2,539th
First recorded 18801994
Girls / boys 1,304 / 380,6110 / 1,961

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 Elijah Elyjah
England and Wales 24,04315
France 4,455395
Belgium 6965

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 Elyjah.