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Elwood vs Elwyn

American parents have registered 20,839 Elwoods since 1880, against 3,336 Elwyns. Elwood is still ahead, with 81 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Elwood against Elwyn, 1880 to 2025 0 200 400 600 800 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Elwood Elwyn

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

Elwood 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 2005, when Elwood had 11 and Elwyn had 8.

Side by side

  Elwood Elwyn
Total US births 20,8393,336
Most in one year 625104
Babies in 2025 8118
Estimated living today 5,000880
Median age today 6867
Peak year 19211924
Best rank 215th boys626th boys
Rank in 2025 1,919th6,446th
First recorded 18801893
Girls / boys 53 / 20,786105 / 3,231

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 Elwood Elwyn
England and Wales 499137
France 5100

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: Elwood and Elwyn.