A diminutive of Elizabeth, Elsie means ‘my God is an oath’. It is based on the Hebrew name Elisheva, derived from ‘el’ referring to the Hebrew God and ‘shava’ meaning ‘oath’.
Elsie is a first name typically given to girls, but in rare cases also used as a boys name.
The name Elsie isn’t among the current fashionable names in our top 10 stats, but nonetheless, it’s still very popular and common. In our SmartGenius ranking of all girls names, Elsie ranks 273. Recently, out of every 10,000 newborn girls, approximately 7 were named Elsie. In the entire USA, approximately 138,477 people – children, adults and seniors – currently bear the name Elsie. That is 0.04 % of all living Americans.
Elsie is the epitome of endurance. Every year since first names have been registered in the United States, parents have come up with the idea of naming their daughter Elsie. This means that several girls named Elsie have witnessed historic events such as the first Nobel Prize ceremony, the moon landing, the release of the first cell phone, or the turn of the millennium. The first name Elsie has reached its highest rank of 31 numerous times, but that was long ago before the beginning of the last century, last time in 1897. Nevertheless, the name has been in the top 100 repeatedly. This makes Elsie one of the most popular names of all time.
In years where the graph has no value, the name Elsie was given less than five times or even none at all in the entire USA.
Elsie will be Elsie. Like every other year, there have been newborns named Elsie in 2022 – in fact 1,545 to be precise, confirming Elsie is still a popular first name. In this most recent year for which US-wide statistics are available, the name ranked #179 among all girls‘ names. For comparison, the least popular year for this first name was 1996, when only 128 baby girls were named Elsie.
The name Elsie may not be in the top rankings of the most popular girls’ names, but it is one of the few female given names, along with only 536 others, that can be found in every single state in the U.S. from Alaska to Florida and from California to New York. Of course, the name occurs more frequently in some states than in others – and Elsie is apparently especially popular in North Dakota. Although the name is not one of the top 100 most popular women’s names here either, one in 399 women in North Dakota is called Elsie. In total, that’s 1,309 women who feel addressed when the name Elsie is shouted loudly across North Dakota and who ensure that their name makes it to #114 in our SmartGenius ranking of the most common female names in this nice state. If you asked all women in the entire U.S. for their first name, you would hear Elsie as the answer a total of 138,440 times. This places Elsie at #252 in our SmartGenius statistics for the most popular women’s names in the whole of the USA. This is true for all currently living women across all states and age groups – the recent popularity of the name Elsie as a baby name is, of course, a bit different, as you can see from the statistics above.
Well, you might say, you probably figured that out yourself! But what you might not know is: The letter E is neither particularly common nor particularly rare as a first letter for girls' names: 3.9% of all common girls' names in the US begin with this letter. The most common first letters of girls' names, by the way, are A, S and M, while U, X and Q are the least common initials of girls' names.
With five letters, the name Elsie is comparatively short. In fact, 17.0% of all common first names in the US consist of exactly five letters. Only 7% of all first names are even shorter, while 75% have more than five letters. On average, first names in the US (not counting hyphenated names) are 6.5 letters long. There are no significant differences between boys' and girls' names.
That means that with 3.9%, E as the first letter in girls' names is almost as common as all 26 letters on average - and of all the girls' names that start with an E, Elizabeth is the most common.
If your name is Elsie and someone asks after your name, you can of course just tell them what it is. But sometimes that isn't so easy - what if it's too loud, and you don't understand them well? Or what if the other person is so far away that you can see them but not hear them? In these situations, you can communicate your name in so many other ways: you call spell it, sign it, or even use a flag to wave it...
So that everyone really understands you when you have to spell the name Elsie, you can simply say:
Elephant
Lion
Sun
Igloo
Elephant
Braille is made up of dots, which the blind and visually impaired can feel to read words.
Elsie
Elsie
Just use American Sign Language!
These flags are used for maritime communication - each flag represents a letter.
E
L
S
I
E
In the navy, sailors of two ships might wave flags to each other to send messages. A sailor holds two flags in specific positions to represent different letters.
E
L
S
I
E
In Morse code, letters and other characters are represented only by a series of short and long tones. For example, a short tone followed by a long tone stands for the letter A. Elsie sounds like this:
