Nelly
#1,291 in the US in 2025
Nelly in the United States
Between 2016 and 2025 the name has been rising — up 83% as a share of girls' births.
SOURCE·US Social Security Administration, national baby-name data·Public domain. SSA lists a name only if it was given to at least 5 babies of that sex that year.·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Nelly in New Zealand
Nelly never reached 10 births in a single year in New Zealand, so it does not appear in the DIA file. That is a reporting floor, not a zero — the name may still have been registered here, just never ten times in one year.
SOURCE·NZ Department of Internal Affairs, births by first name·CC BY 4.0. DIA lists a name only if it was given to at least 10 babies of that sex that year.·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Decade by decade in the US
| Year | Rank | Births |
|---|---|---|
| 1890 | #1,006 | 8 |
| 1900 | below floor | — |
| 1910 | #1,935 | 7 |
| 1920 | #1,889 | 21 |
| 1930 | #1,535 | 26 |
| 1940 | #1,682 | 22 |
| 1950 | #2,121 | 21 |
| 1960 | #1,393 | 62 |
| 1970 | #1,828 | 48 |
| 1980 | #1,644 | 70 |
| 1990 | #1,503 | 103 |
| 2000 | #1,571 | 113 |
| 2010 | #1,420 | 161 |
| 2020 | #2,023 | 92 |
Where in the United States
The states that registered Nelly most often since 1882. These are lifetime totals, so they track state population as much as local taste — a name common in Wyoming will never out-count California.
| State | Births |
|---|---|
| California | 1,821 |
| Texas | 1,135 |
| New York | 934 |
| Illinois | 377 |
| Florida | 206 |
| North Carolina | 86 |
| New Jersey | 86 |
| Washington | 77 |
| Georgia | 69 |
| Arizona | 52 |
How these figures are worked out
- Counts come straight from the registrars: the US Social Security Administration (1880–2025) and the New Zealand Department of Internal Affairs (1900–2025). Nothing is scraped from another names site.
- Ranks are computed against every name in that year's file, not just the ones this site publishes pages for — otherwise a rank would flatter every name we happen to list.
- The curve is drawn on births per 100,000 of that sex, not raw counts. Raw counts across eras are misleading: far more births were registered in 1957 than in 1890, so a flat count is a falling share.
- Each country hides small numbers — the US below 5 births a year, New Zealand below 10. A gap in a line is "below the floor", never "nobody".
SOURCE·US SSA (1880–2025) + NZ DIA (1900–2025) birth registrations·ranks and shares computed from the source files, see method·REVIEWED JUL 2026