There’s no denying that baby names starting with “El” have taken off in recent years. Elijah is the seventh most popular male name in the US, Ella is ranked #15, Eleanor is sitting at #32, and even “nickname name” Ellie ranks in the top 40 at #37!
So for this Name vs. Name match up, we’ve picked two names with this hot first syllable. Scroll down for our favorite (We agree this time!) and vote for yours.
Name 1: Elliot
Origin: English; Anglicized version of Elijah
Meaning: “God on high;” “Jehovah is my God”
Pronunciation: EL-ee-it
Nicknames: El, Ellie
Current Rank: #162 (highest ranked variant)
Trending: Elliot is a recently-gender-neutral baby name with many alternate spellings, making it a little complicated to track. In general, though, the name (and all its variations) has been steadily increasing in popularity. In 2018, we see the numbers plateau, so we’ll be looking to see what happens in the next few years. For males, the Elliot spelling is the most popular, but only by a teensy bit: Elliot is ranked #162 and Elliott (two T’s) is #168. But, interestingly, for females the double-T spelling is significantly more popular than the single-T spelling: Elliott is ranked #535, while Elliot is ranked #632.
Our Take: An established surname in Europe and in the US, the given name Elliot is said to come from Elias, which comes from the biblical Elijah. So it’s a name with some serious history. Famous namesakes are Lord Eliot, poet T.S. Eliot, novelist George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans’s pen name), singer-songwriter Elliott Smith, and actor Elliott Gould. In the pop culture world, the early 1980s gave us the lovable character Elliot from E.T. And 20 years later, tv medical comedy Scrubs featured a female Elliot. While it’s likely that the show had some influence on baby namers, it wasn’t immediate or dramatic: female Elliot didn’t make the SSA’s top 1000 baby names until 10 years after Scrubs premiered. Elliot is also the middle name of Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. With all its associations, the name Elliot feels surprisingly free of baggage. It’s not too strongly tied to any of its namesakes, which makes it easily wearable.
Name 2: Ellis
Origin: English, Welsh
Meaning: “benevolent”
Pronunciation: EL-is
Nicknames: El, Ellie
Rank: #317
Trending: As with Elliot, and other El- names more generally, Ellis has been steadily increasing in popularity, with a plateau in 2018. A look at the next few years’ data will tell us if this is a longer term trend or just a blip on the radar.
Our Take: With the same derivation as Elliot, Ellis is also a popular Welsh name. And it has quite a bit of history, despite feeling like a modern invention. Famous namesakes include Welsh politician Ellis Lloyd, Sir Ellis Ellis-Griffith, Ellis Loring Dresel, and Ellis Bell (Emily Bronte’s pen name). In fiction, there’s Ellis Wyatt, from Ayn Rand’s novel Atlas Shrugged and Ellis Burden, the “Scholarly Attorney” in Robert Penn Warren’s All the King’s Men. And then there is Ellis Island, which, for Americans, lends the name a symbolic quality. Ellis is part of the rising trend of names that end in -s, like Hayes, Hollis, Davis, and Ennis. It’s an ending that tends to have a more gender-neutral feel, probably because many of the -s ending names had their start as surnames.
The Verdict
Elliot has a lot of great associations, as well as religious ties, while Ellis has a freshness that is right on trend with other surname-style baby names. It’s a close call. But we choose…
Star’s pick: Ellis
Lynda’s pick: Ellis
Vote for your favorite, and tell us why in the comments!