Ellis
The boy's name Ellis has been in the national records since 1880, with 57,731 births to its name. In 2025 it ranked 243rd. About 35,000 Ellises are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 12.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Ellis boys named Ellis
Girls and boys called Ellis
years more girls than boys years more boys than girls
Both, throughout, without either side ever taking it over: 7,328 girls and 50,403 boys in all, and in 2025 the split was 415 to 1,417.
The girls’ share of each year’s babies of the name, in the 146 years in which at least 25 babies got it. The line touches the middle more often than there are crossings marked: a year or two on the other side is not a name changing hands, and only a move that holds for 5 counted years and reaches 60/40 is recorded as one. All 581 names that changed sex.
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 57,731
- Estimated living today
- 35,000
- Median age today
- 12
- Peak year
- 2025
- Best rank
- 243rd
- Rank in 2025
- 243rd
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 7,328 / 50,403
How old the living Ellises are
born that year still alive today
Of the 57,731 babies given the name since 1880, about 35,000 are alive — 61 in every hundred. Roughly 20,000 of them are children and 5,900 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 2013 and half after.
An estimate, not a count. SSA births aged forward through SSA cohort life tables, which know nothing about who left the country or arrived in it — so for a name that mostly came to America rather than being born in it, this is a floor rather than a figure. Where you fall among living Americans.
Where the name comes from
Origin Welsh
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Elliss
- Michael Ellis DeBakey (1908–2008)American cardiac surgeon
- Ellis Marsalis Jr. (1934–2020)American jazz pianist and educator
- Ellis Clarke (1917–2010)last Governor-General and first President of Trinidad and Tobago
- Ellis Ferreira (born 1970)South African tennis player
- Ellis Rowan (1848–1922)Australian artist, botanical illustrator and botanical collector
- Hilda Ellis Davidson (1914–2006)British academic
People named Ellis with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Ellis is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Ellis is most concentrated in Mississippi (3.3×), Alabama (2.6×), Louisiana (2.6×), Arkansas (2.1×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 2025
The most popular boys’ names the year Ellis peaked:
Ellis elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| England and Wales boys | Ellis | 19,940 | 77th |
| England and Wales girls | Ellis | 1,526 | 248th |
| Scotland boys | Ellis | 1,145 | 88th |
| Belgium girls | Ellis | 1,132 | 60th |
| Scotland girls | Ellis | 936 | 112th |
| Ireland boys | Ellis | 193 | 250th |
| France boys | Ellis | 165 | 2,094th |
| Northern Ireland boys | Ellis | 143 | 160th |
| Belgium boys | Ellis | 111 | 888th |
| Switzerland boys | Ellis | 96 | 612th |
| Ireland girls | Ellis | 54 | 464th |
| Switzerland girls | Ellis | 37 | 973rd |
| France girls | Ellis | 20 | 5,502nd |
| Northern Ireland girls | Ellis | 13 | 281st |
Counts come from each country's own records and are not comparable with the US figures above, which cover different years and a different definition of a recorded name. Where a country writes the name several ways, the spellings are added together and the most common is shown. A row marked name registrations is counting something else: Portugal ranks each of a child's two given names separately, so a girl registered Maria Leonor is in both the Maria row and the Leonor row, and that figure is not a number of children.
Ellis: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German boys | Switzerland | Ellis | 77 | 0.006% | 547th |
| German girls | Switzerland | Ellis | 29 | 0.002% | 865th |
| French boys | Switzerland | Ellis | 19 | 0.004% | 517th |
| French girls | Switzerland | Ellis | 2 | 0.000% | 659th |
| Italian girls | Switzerland | Ellis | 6 | 0.009% | 180th |
Parts of a country counted above, not extra births. The share is what makes the regions comparable: they differ in size by a factor of three hundred.
By canton, Ellis is most concentrated in Zurich, where 0.01% of children were given it – 42 of them.
Ellis: rank by region
In 2025, Ellis was given 5 times or more in 2 regions of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Ellis | 112 | 50 |
| Flanders | Ellis | 714 | 7 |
In 2025, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Ellis appears in the lists for Province of Limburg (41st), Province of Flemish Brabant (48th), Province of Antwerp (136th), Province of West Flanders (186th) and Province of East Flanders (214th).
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children – and published nothing after. So a region missing here is one where the name fell outside what was published, not one where it went unused. Places are shared where names tie, and the further down a list a place is, the more names can share it.
Ellis by city
| City | Years | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin boys | 2017–2023 | 2 | 546th |
| Berlin girls | 2017–2023 | 2 | 544th |
One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.
Ellis among the living
How many people each country's register counts under the name, rather than how many were given it in any one year. Each register was read on one date, and they are not the same date.
| Country | Spelling | First forename | Any forename |
|---|---|---|---|
| the Netherlands girls | Ellis | 1,716 | 2,134 |
| the Netherlands boys | Ellis | 36 | 112 |
| Finland boys | Ellis | 24 | 46 |
| Finland girls | Ellis | 19 | 28 |
A count of people on a register – the Netherlands on 1 January 2018, Finland on 4 August 2026 – and not of births, so it cannot be compared with the figures above. Names with very few bearers are withheld, and a dash in the first-forename column means the register would not say rather than that nobody goes by it.
Related names
Ellis against another name
Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.
Try it on yourself
Source: US Social Security Administration, national and state baby-name files, 1880–2025. Counts include only births registered with the SSA, and names with fewer than five births in a year are not published. The living estimate applies SSA cohort life tables to those births; it counts people born in the United States, so it misses anyone who arrived later and anyone who has left.