Elijah, Eliana, Elsie: the names that start with El

In every year of American records we hold, from 1880 to 2018, the biggest girls' name beginning with El was Elizabeth. It was fourth in the country in 1880, third in 1887, and it has never been lower than 26th. This year it is 17th, and it is only the third El- name on the list. Eliana is tenth and Eleanor is twelfth. Eliana is the first name beginning El, other than Elizabeth, to reach the American top ten in any year we hold.

That is the top of something bigger. In 1880 one American girl in 20 had a name beginning El. By 1972 it was one in 77. In 2017 it was one in 29, and in England and Wales in 2025 it is one girl in 23. For boys the story is the same shape and steeper: one boy in 108 in 1880, one in 820 in 1968, and one in 52 in 2017, which is more than in any year since the records began. Here it is one boy in 51. El is back, on both sides of the Atlantic, and for girls it is the second commonest start to a name in both countries.

How we counted

A name is an El- name if its first two letters, as the official file spells it, are E and L. That is spelling, not sound. Ella and Eli do not start with the same sound, and Elena is said differently from Eleanor, but all of them count, because the rule is the two letters and nothing else. Boys and girls are counted from their own lists. For 1880 to 2008 we use the long American series, which holds the top 1,000 names of each sex and their share of births, so those figures are a floor: a name outside the top 1,000 is not in them. For 1990, 2000, 2005, 2008, 2010 and 2017 we have the full files, every name given to five or more babies, and for 2015 to 2025 the published rankings. England and Wales is the full Office for National Statistics file for 2025, checked against 2024. There is no hand list.

One girl in 20, one in 77, one in 29

In 1880 El was the second commonest start for an American girl's name, behind only Ma. 50 girls in every 1,000 had one: Elizabeth was 42% of them, Ella was 13th in the country, Ellen 61st, Elsie 78th, Eliza 85th and Eleanor 127th, and there were 37 El- names in the top 1,000. Then it fell, for ninety years. 41 per 1,000 in 1920, when Eleanor had its best year at 25th. 26 in 1940. 17 in 1960, when El had dropped to the 21st commonest start and only 15 El- names were left in the top 1,000. The low was 1972, at 13 per 1,000, one girl in 77. That year Ella was 709th, Eleanor 550th, Eliza 869th and Elsie 943rd, Eloise was out of the top 1,000 altogether, and Elizabeth, 15th, was carrying the whole letter pair on its own.

The full file for 1990 shows what that looked like at the bottom: 31,929 girls with an El- name, and Elizabeth was 20,739 of them, two thirds. The next biggest was Ellen with 1,376. Then the old names came back, one by one. Ella was 954th in 1983 and 19th by 2008. Eleanor was 692nd in 1986 and is 12th. Elsie left the top 1,000 in 1976, came back in 2005 and is 123rd. Eloise was out from 1966 to 2008 and is 49th. Eliza was 990th in 1968 and is 115th. And new ones arrived alongside them: Eliana first entered the top 1,000 in 1986 and is 10th, Elliana, Elianna, Elaina, Elodie, Elowyn and Elora behind it.

By 2017, the last year we hold a full count for, 58,946 American girls had an El- name, one in 29, across 774 different spellings, and Elizabeth was 15% of them. On the rankings the climb has carried on: El- names in the girls' top 1,000 went from 26 in 2015 to 32 in 2025, in the top 100 from four to seven, and in the top 30 from two to five. Not everything went up. Ella slipped from 18th to 29th, Elizabeth from 13th to 17th, and Ellen, 59th in 1884, left the top 1,000 after 2021.

The boys: one in 820, then one in 52

The boys' El- names of 1880 were a different crowd. Elmer was 41st in the country and a third of all the El- boys, and it stayed the biggest El- name for 92 years, to 1971. Behind it were Elijah 135th, Elbert, Eli, Elias, Ellis, Elwood, Eldon, Elton and Elvin, 32 names in all. One boy in 108 had one. That held at about one in 100 to 1920 and then fell to one boy in 820 in 1968, the lowest point in the series, with Elijah at 690th. Three years earlier Eli had been 706th and Elias 644th. There were nine El- names in the boys' top 1,000 in 1998, the fewest ever.

What came back was not Elmer. Elmer was last in the top 1,000 in 2007, Elbert in 1982, Elwood in 1969, Eldon in 1977, Elton in 1990 and Elvin in 2007, and none of them is within sight of it now. The boys' revival ran through the Bible: Elijah led the El- boys from 1977, was 243rd in 1990, 52nd in 2000, 22nd in 2008, 4th in 2020 and 2021, and is 7th. Eli went from 361st in 1990 to 53rd in 2015. Elias has climbed in every year since 2015, 100th to 13th, which is why it was in our article on the names on a streak. Behind them are Elisha, Eliezer and Eleazar, all Old Testament names too. The only big El- boys' name that is not is Elliott, which has been in the top 1,000 in every year we hold and is 160th now, with the one-t Elliot at 151st.

In the full 1990 file 6,322 American boys had an El- name, one in 325. In 2000 it was one in 130, in 2008 one in 76, and in 2017 one in 52: 35,516 boys, Elijah 13,268 of them, Eli 6,553, Elias 4,894, Elliott 2,421 and Elliot 2,416, Ellis 1,099. That one in 52 is the highest figure for boys in any year we hold, above the one in 108 of 1880. On the rankings since then Elijah and Elias have gone up, Eli has gone down, 53rd to 104th, and the top 1,000 holds 13 El- boys' names against nine in 2015.

England and Wales: one girl in 23

Britain is further along. In England and Wales in 2025, 11,094 girls were given an El- name, one in 23, across 208 different spellings, and El is the second commonest start for a girl here too, behind Ma. But the names are not America's names. The biggest El- name here is Elsie, 8th with 1,700 girls, which is 123rd in America. Then Ella 46th, Elodie 49th with 849 girls (310th in America), Eleanor 56th, Eliana 62nd, Eliza 65th, Elizabeth 74th with 624 girls, and Eloise 83rd. Eight El- names in the top 100 against America's seven, with five in common. Elizabeth, the biggest El- name in America in every year to 2018, is the seventh biggest here. Ellie, 24th in America, is 119th here and fell from 534 girls in 2024 to 410.

Boys: 5,363 with an El- name, one in 51, 86 spellings. Elijah 23rd with 1,659 boys, Elias 69th, Ellis 92nd, Elliot 94th and Elliott 121st (962 together), Eli 137th, Elio 308th. One in 51 here and one in 52 there, from almost the same five names. 2024 gives the same answer in both columns: one girl in 23, one boy in 52. The only big move in a year was Eliana, 416 girls to 736, which we noted in the article on the names rising in Britain.

Whose El- names are whose

Put the two countries per head, England and Wales 2025 against America 2017, and the split is clean. Elodie is 20.6 times as common here as there, Elsie 9.6 times, Elara 6.2, Elowyn 5.2, Elowen 3.8, Elora 3.2, Ellis 3.2, Eloise 2.1 and Eliza 2.1. The other way, Eli is 2.9 times as common in America, Elizabeth 2.3, Elle 2.2, Elise 2.2, Elena 2.1, Ellie 2.0, Ella 1.4 and Elijah 1.3. Eleanor, Elias and Elliott are about level. Of the eight El- names in Britain's top 100, four are commoner here per head (Elsie, Elodie, Eliza, Eloise) and four are commoner in America (Ella, Eleanor, Eliana, Elizabeth).

What we cannot tell you

Why. The files hold what parents chose, not what they heard or who they were copying, and a letter pair does not have a reason. We can say that the girls' El- names of 1880 came back under their own names and the boys' did not, and that the boys' revival is a Bible revival, which fits what we found in the article on Old Testament names. We cannot say the two have one cause. The rule counts letters, so it puts Ella and Eli together when nobody saying them would. We do not hold 2009 to 2014 for America, and the long series is a floor because it holds only the top 1,000. And we hold two British years, so Britain's own history of El is not in this article.

What it means for you

If you are choosing an El- name, you have company: one girl in 23 and one boy in 51 in the most recent year here. The ones climbing fastest in America are Eliana, Eleanor and Eloise; the ones that are British first are Elsie and Elodie, which America has barely started on. If you want the sound without the crowd, Elowyn, Elora and Elara each went to between 126 and 201 girls here last year. And if you want Elizabeth, it is 74th here now, lower than it has ever been in America, where it is the one El- name that has never once left the top 30.