Zela vs Zelia

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Zela Zelia

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 104 years in which either name was published, Zelia for 81 years and Zela for 23 years. The lead changed hands 30 times.

• 1883–1927 Zelia ahead, apart from 3 short spells
• 1933–1936 Zela ahead
• 1937–1941 Zelia ahead
• 1942–1946 Zela ahead
• 1947–2025 Zelia ahead, apart from one short spell

22 shorter spells of a year or two are folded into the spans above rather than listed separately.

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 Zelias alive today are over 13; half the Zelas are over 8. That is 5 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

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

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