Name Awesome

Else

Girls' name

Short form of Elisabeth

Else has been given to 514 babies in the U.S. since 1884. It was used fewer than 5 times in 2025, so it doesn't appear in the latest year's list — today it's a genuinely uncommon pick. Its peak year was 1932, with 14 recorded.

Babies named Else, 2020

1 in 668,000

Else over time, 1880–2025

Girls
05101518801900192019401960198020002020

Based on births in the U.S. Babies given the name each year. Hover the chart — or focus it and use the arrow keys — for any year. Gaps mean the name was given fewer than 5 times that year; these counts are unpublished.

Else: meaning, origin, and history

Short form of Elisabeth

Deeper origin not confirmed in the cited records

What Else means

Else is a short form of Elisabeth.

Documented naming usage and pronunciation

Else is used in Danish, Norwegian, German and Dutch.

Another recorded pronunciation is /ˈɛl.zə/ and /ˈɛl.sə/ for Else.

Meaning behind the documented name family

The name developed through Else → Elisabeth. The family’s meaning is “my God is an oath”, recorded in English with the source elements Elishéva.

Origin, language, and formation

Else is used in Danish, Finnish, German and Norwegian.

Related names and everyday forms

Related names include Elisabeth and Elsa.

Pronunciation and spelling

In Finnish, Else is pronounced /ˈelse/.

American usage and historical context

In the United States, 514 girls were recorded with the name Else between 1884 and 2020. Its highest annual count was 14 in 1932; its best national rank was #924 in 1892.

Sources & methodologyReferences, data & attribution

Meaning, origin, and language notes draw on the references below.

American popularity figures use published Social Security Administration records for this exact spelling. Counts below five for a name, sex, and year are omitted.

Wiktionary material is available under CC BY-SA 4.0.

How common is Else?

Else had fewer than 5 recorded uses in 2025, so these figures use 2020, the last year it was published.

Among all babies, 2020
1 in 668,000
5 of 3,342,313 births
Among girls only
1 in 323,000
<0.01% of girls
Rank, 2020
Unranked
Fewer than 5 uses
Coin-flip room size
463,344 kids
Even odds of a second one

Where Else sits on the popularity scale

Rarest published (5 a year)#1 — Olivia (13,544)

Chance at least one other child shares the name

If the other children were drawn at random from the 2020 national name distribution. Real classrooms cluster by region and community, so treat these as a floor, not a ceiling.

Class of 20Under 1%
Class of 30Under 1%
Grade of 100Under 1%
School of 500Under 1%

Put another way: gather 463,344 children born in 2020 and it's an even bet that one of them is another Else. In a class of 30 the chance is Under 1%.

When Elses were born

Half of everyone ever recorded as Else was born before 1931 — so the typical Else is around 94 today.

Median birth year
1931
About 94 years old
Biggest decade
1930s
16.1% of all use
Born in the last 25 years
25.7%
Spread across generations
Recorded since 1950
177
People you could plausibly meet
Choose a decade

1930s — 16.1% of all recorded uses (83).

Is Else rising or falling?

Rank movement and count movement can disagree — the number of distinct names in use keeps growing, so a name holding a steady count still slides down the list. Both are shown.

Rank vs 1 year ago
—
Not ranked then
Rank vs 5 years ago
New entry
Not ranked then
Rank vs 10 years ago
—
Not ranked then
Births vs 10 years ago
—
Not published both years
Share of its own peak
0%
Peak was 1932 (14)
Years since peak
93
Years
Year-to-year steadiness
Volatile
30.3% average annual change
Best rank ever
#924
1892

Spellings of Else

Else is not the most common spelling — Rose is, with 21.6% against Else's 0.02%.

Grouped by closeness of spelling (up to two letter changes), same sex, with a floor on all-time use. It catches Sophia/Sofia and Aiden/Ayden, and misses spellings that sound alike but look different, like Sean and Shawn.

Where Else is used

Across 1910–2025, Else was most concentrated in New York — about 1 in — girls, against 1 in 962,031 across all states with data.

00 per 100,000

Most concentrated

  1. 1New York1 in —

Shading is the share of that state's recorded girls given this name, not the raw count — otherwise the map would just show which states are biggest. Unshaded states have no published records for this period. U.S. birth records suppress state-year counts below 5; state counts therefore don't add up to the national total. Every state links to its full rankings. Else has too little recent state data to map, so this covers all years from 1910.

Else around the world

Where Else ranks in official birth records elsewhere in the world. Rankings only — the number of births isn’t comparable between places, so it isn’t shown.

  • England & Wales
    2008–2022
    #5,670
    in 2022
  • France
    1900–2010
    #6,706
    in 2010
  • Norway
    1880–2025
    #189
    in 2025
  • South Australia
    1953–1990
    #691
    in 1990

Popularity data from Office for National Statistics, Institut national de la statistique et des études économiques, Statistics Norway and Consumer and Business Services (South Australia). ONS data under Open Government Licence v3.0. INSEE data under Licence Ouverte / Etalab 2.0. SSB, CBS SA data under CC BY 4.0.

Else by the numbers

The raw record for each sex the name is used for.

As a girl's name

Rank in 2025
Unranked
Trend vs 5 yrs ago
—
Best rank ever
#924
1892
Peak year
1932
14 that year
First recorded
1884
Last recorded
2020
All-time count
514
Count in 2025
Under 5

Names similar to Else

Matched on shared beginnings and endings, similar length, and comparable popularity.

ElsiElsyElseyElsiaElsbethIlseElspethElsyeElseeDulseElsaChelseElseaElshaKelseElsahElssaElsieEmilseElsiemaeElstonElsianaElswythElsabeth

Sibling names for Else

Names from the same era and popularity tier — the two things that make a sibling set feel deliberate — skipping lookalike spellings and shared initials.

Explore around Else

Top names of 1932, Else's peak yearThe 1930s in fullOther names that peaked in 1892Girls' names starting with EDanish Girl NamesShort German Girl Names