Humanverse

Elin vs Elise

American parents have registered 75,252 Elises since 1880, against 5,204 Elins. Elise is still ahead, with 1,367 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Elin against Elise, 1880 to 2025 0 600 1.2k 1.8k 2.4k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Elin Elise

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

Elise 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 2010, when Elin had 402 and Elise had 1,588.

Side by side

  Elin Elise
Total US births 5,20475,252
Most in one year 4282,126
Babies in 2025 531,367
Estimated living today 4,80067,000
Median age today 1221
Peak year 20112012
Best rank 662nd girls152nd girls
Rank in 2025 3,067th223rd
First recorded 18931880
Girls / boys 5,052 / 15275,186 / 66

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 Elises alive today are over 21; half the Elins are over 12. That is 9 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 Elin Elise
France 355126,480
Norway 14,7567,889
Sweden 14,8173,836
England and Wales 2,2229,629
Belgium 44610,696
Switzerland 3,9141,252
Scotland 291,338
Ireland 34564
Northern Ireland 3174
Poland 637

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: Elin and Elise.