Humanverse

Elle vs Ellis

American parents have registered 57,731 Ellises since 1880, against 19,247 Elles. Ellis is still ahead, with 1,832 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Elle against Ellis, 1880 to 2025 0 500 1k 1.5k 2k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Elle Ellis

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

Of the 146 years in which either name was published, Ellis for 134 years and Elle for 12 years. The lead changed hands 2 times.

Side by side

  Elle Ellis
Total US births 19,24757,731
Most in one year 8901,832
Babies in 2025 6681,832
Estimated living today 19,00035,000
Median age today 1212
Peak year 20192025
Best rank 354th girls243rd boys
Rank in 2025 461st243rd
First recorded 19771880
Girls / boys 19,247 / 07,328 / 50,403

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 Elle Ellis
England and Wales 5,71621,466
Scotland 8352,081
Belgium 8101,243
Ireland 427247
Northern Ireland 249156
France 25185
Switzerland 42133

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: Elle and Ellis.