Nellie vs Nels

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Nellie Nels

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

Nellie 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 1982, when Nellie had 127 and Nels had 41.

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 Nellies alive today are over 71; half the Nelses are over 51. That is 20 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Where each one is strongest

• Nellie West Virginia (3.7×), Alabama (3.2×), Kentucky (2.6×)
• Nels Minnesota (16.5×), North Dakota (13.5×), Wisconsin (5.6×)

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.

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