The most used girls' names beginning with E in 2025

No letter carries more of the girls' top 100 than E. Seventeen E names sit inside it, from Elsie at eighth to Emma at 85th, which is more than A and more than M. In total the ONS recorded 25,709 girls given an E name in 2025 across 510 spellings, about one girl in ten. The ten below are the largest; seven more E names follow them inside the top 100.

ONS rank (all girls' names)	Name	Babies in 2025	Meaning and origin
8	Elsie	1,700	Scots short form of Elspeth, itself Elizabeth, Hebrew Elisheva, my God is an oath
12	Evelyn	1,560	Norman French Aveline, a diminutive of Ava; the link to Eve is folk etymology
35	Evie	1,129	English short form of Eve or Evelyn; Eve is Hebrew Chawwah, living
44	Emily	956	Roman family name Aemilius, from Latin aemulus, rival
45	Esme	933	Old French esme, esteemed; originally a man's name in Scotland
46	Ella	932	Norman French from Germanic alia, other; also a short form of Eleanor
49	Elodie	849	French from the Spanish saint's name Alodia, probably Germanic; the meaning is uncertain
51	Emilia	832	Feminine of the Roman family name Aemilius, from aemulus, rival
56	Eleanor	776	Old French Alienor, of Occitan origin; the meaning has never been resolved
58	Eva	758	Latin form of Eve, Hebrew Chawwah, living
62	Eliana	736	Two lines: Hebrew, my God has answered, and a Latin feminine of Aelianus; both are current
65	Eliza	712	English short form of Elizabeth, my God is an oath

The most used boys' names beginning with E in 2025

The boys' letter is smaller but still substantial: 14,529 babies across 315 names, with eight inside the top 100. Its shape is different from the girls'. Where the girls' E names are largely English and French forms of Elizabeth and Eve, the boys' list is biblical at the top, with Elijah, Ezra, Elias and Eli all drawing on the same Hebrew stock.

ONS rank (all boys' names)	Name	Babies in 2025	Meaning and origin
23	Elijah	1,659	Hebrew Eliyyahu, my God is Yahweh, the prophet of 1 Kings
31	Edward	1,385	Old English Eadweard, rich guard
38	Ezra	1,300	Hebrew, help
54	Ethan	917	Hebrew eitan, firm or enduring
69	Elias	738	Greek form of Elijah, my God is Yahweh
84	Enzo	617	Italian, from Germanic Heinz, itself Heinrich, home ruler
92	Ellis	582	Welsh surname from Elisedd, and a medieval English form of Elijah; both feed the modern name
94	Elliot	544	Medieval diminutive of Elias, my God is Yahweh
121	Elliott	418	Medieval diminutive of Elias, my God is Yahweh
137	Eli	373	Hebrew, ascent or height; also used as a short form of Elijah
159	Eesa	330	A spelling of Isa, the Arabic form of Jesus as named in the Quran
168	Eric	300	Old Norse Eirikr, ever-ruler or sole ruler

Which E names are rising and which are falling

Climbing

Eliana produced the biggest single-year climb in the whole of the 2025 girls' top 100, up 54 places to 62nd and marked by the ONS as a new entry to the top 100. Eleanor rose 11 places, Elias 10, Evelyn 8, Enzo 8, Esme 6, Elodie 6 and Elliot 4. The ten-year columns are larger again: Enzo is up 228 places since 2015, Eliana 187, Eden 51, Elodie 113 and Ezra 89.

Slipping

The traditional English E names lost ground. Elizabeth fell 12 places in 2025 and is down 36 since 2015; Emily fell 10 and is down 41; Emma fell 16 and is down 27; Eden fell 20 despite being 51 places higher than in 2015. Ella lost 7, Evie 6, Emilia 6, Erin 7 and Eva 4. Among boys only Ethan fell, by 6 places, and it is down 36 over ten years.

What the published change columns cannot tell you

Even a letter this large has a hard edge at rank 100. Erin, Elizabeth, Eden, Eloise and Emma are the last E girls' names with published movement; Elliott, Eli, Eesa, Eric, Evan and Ezekiel are all below the line on the boys' side and have counts but no change figures. The seventeen and eight names above are the complete set of E names the ONS reports movement for.

How big a letter E really is

E is the third-largest letter for girls and the sixth for boys, and it is one of the least top-heavy letters on the girls' side: Elsie takes only 7 per cent of the letter. That is because the letter is really several families at once. Elizabeth alone generates Elsie, Eliza, Elizabeth, Elsa and Ellie; Eve generates Evie, Eva and Evelyn; and each form is counted separately.

That separate counting matters more here than anywhere else in the alphabet. Emily at 956 and Emilia at 832 are different rows, as are Elliot at 544 and Elliott at 418, and Isabelle and Isobel show the same effect one letter later. If you are trying to judge how common a name will sound rather than how it will look, add the variants together before you decide.

Further E names in the published 2025 list

The ONS full list does not stop at the tables above, and the counts stay exact all the way down. For girls the next names in order of use are Erin at 633, Elizabeth at 624, Eden at 594, Eloise at 546, Emma at 536, Ellie at 410, Edith at 390, Etta at 338, Esther at 333, Edie at 322, Elena at 307, Esmae at 306. For boys they are Evan at 261, Ezekiel at 242, Eddie at 225, Ernest at 185, Eden at 180, Emmanuel at 161, Elio at 147, Ernie at 138, Elis at 119, Erik at 99, Edwin at 98, Emrys at 96. Each figure is the exact number of babies registered with that exact spelling during 2025, taken from the ONS full-list table rather than from the top 100. The letter carries 510 different girls' names and 315 different boys' names in the published data altogether, and any name given to two or fewer babies has been removed from it.

Choosing a E name: what the data changes

E is a safe letter and a crowded one. If you want the sound without the frequency, the published data points to names in the 60 to 100 band, where Eliana, Eloise and Elodie have all climbed sharply but still sit below 900 babies each. If you want to avoid the crowd altogether, note that one girl in ten in England and Wales was given an E name in 2025, and a school register will show it.

Baby names starting with E: girls and boys