Elaine

girls:

261k births since 1880

#154 (97th percentile)

boys:

653 births since 1918

#3934 (14th percentile)

overall:

261.7k births since 1880

#302 (96th percentile)

Popularity Trends

The name Elaine is the #302 most popular name of all time in the U.S. on a gender-neutral basis, with a total of 261,676 recorded births since 1880. This represents the 96.1% percentile of name popularity (more popular than 96.1% of all names). For girls, it ranks #154 (97.3% percentile) for all time with 261,023 births since 1880. For boys, it ranks #3,934 (14.2% percentile) for all time with 653 births since 1918.

Elaine has appeared in U.S. birth records since the beginning of our dataset in 1880 (since 1880 for girls and since 1918 for boys). Birth data for Elaine is available in 141 out of the 144 years between 1880 and 2023 (141 years for girls and 60 years for boys). The Social Security Administration only reports birth data for years in which the name was given to at least five children of the same gender.

The name Elaine has been given almost exclusively to girls, with 99.8% of all recorded births being female.

For girls, Elaine reached its peak popularity in 1938, achieving the 93.0% percentile (ranked #42) with 4,235 births per million. The name was most common in 1945, with 4,373 births per million (ranked 93.0% percentile). Since reaching a low point around 2010, the popularity of this name for girls has been increasing. Currently, Elaine ranks #356 for girls (62.5% percentile) with 461 births per million, which is 10.5% of its peak share of births.

For boys, Elaine reached its peak popularity in 1941, achieving the 4.4% percentile (ranked #503) with 22 births per million. The name was most common in 1941, with 22 births per million (ranked 4.4% percentile). There have been no recorded male births with this name since 1989.

This chart shows the total number of births per million babies in each year for the name "Elaine".

1880 2023 18802023

Key Statistics

Total Births
261,023
Peak Births
7,059
Peak Year
1938
First Recorded
1880
Peak Percentile
93.0%
Current Percentile
62.5%
Peak Rank
#42
Current Rank
#356
Female statistics
Total Births
653
Peak Births
28
Peak Year
1941
First Recorded
1918
Peak Percentile
4.4%
Current Percentile
Peak Rank
#503
Current Rank
Male statistics

How to Pronounce Elaine

Our model has identified 7 different pronunciations for the name Elaine. Click the play button under each pronunciation to hear it spoken aloud.

Our model is 49.3% confident that Elaine is pronounced as ih-LAYN, which has 2 syllables. The next most likely pronunciation is ee-LAYN, at 13.4% confidence, with 2 syllables.

2
49.3%
2
13.4%
2
10.4%
2
9.0%
2
9.0%
2
4.5%
2
4.5%
ih-LAYN (2 syllables)
Verified
49.3% confidence
IH0 L EY1 N
ee-LAYN (2 syllables)
Verified
13.4% confidence
IY0 L EY1 N
eh-LAYN (2 syllables)
10.4% confidence
EH0 L EY1 N
uh-LAYN (2 syllables)
Verified
9.0% confidence
AH0 L EY1 N
EE-LAYN (2 syllables)
Verified
9.0% confidence
IY1 L EY1 N
AY-LAYN (2 syllables)
4.5% confidence
EY1 L EY1 N
AY-layn (2 syllables)
4.5% confidence
EY1 L EY0 N

Possible Additional Pronunciations

If none of the pronunciations above sound right to you, could you please check whether any of these related pronunciations should be applied to the name Elaine? These are pronunciations that other similar names use, but which are not currently associated with Elaine. If you think any of these are valid pronunciations for Elaine, please vote using the thumbs up button.

About Pronunciation Data

Our confidence scores estimate the likelihood that a particular pronunciation is the most correct for a given name spelling. These scores are derived from pronunciation dictionaries, manual verification, your feedback, and a fine-tuned large language model trained to generate name pronunciations.

For any given spelling, confidence scores across all identified pronunciations sum to 100%. However, these scores don't account for the possibility of valid pronunciations that our model hasn't identified.

The raw pronunciations shown (like IH0 L EY1 N) use the ARPAbet phoneme system, a standardized way to represent English speech sounds. Each symbol represents a distinct sound in American English. Visit the ARPAbet Wikipedia page to learn more about these phonetic symbols.

Pronunciation audio is generated by an open source text to speech model that has been customized to adhere to pronunciations provided in ARPAbet format, but sometimes pronunciations that differ subtly will sound identical, particularly if the only difference is the level of emphasis on a syllable or a single vowel sound.

© 2025 NamePlay.org

Made with ❤️ by Aaron J Becker