Ely vs Elysa

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Ely Elysa

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 133 years in which either name was published, Ely for 120 years and Elysa for 13 years. The lead changed hands 8 times.

• 1880–1951 Ely ahead
• 1952–1955 Elysa ahead
• 1956–1958 Ely ahead
• 1959–1961 Elysa ahead
• 1962 Ely ahead
• 1963–1967 Elysa ahead
• 1968–1986 Ely ahead
• 1987 Elysa ahead
• 1988–2025 Ely ahead

Side by side

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 Elysas alive today are over 28; half the Elys are over 18. That is 10 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Where each one is strongest

• Ely Texas (3.2×), California (3.0×), New York (2.6×)
• Elysa California (4.7×), New York (3.7×), Texas (1.8×)

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.

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

• Ely vs Eli
• Ely vs Elyse
• Ely vs Elyssa
• Ely vs Elysia
• Ely vs Elyana
• Ely vs Elyas
• Ely vs Elyjah
• Elysa vs Elyse