Elijah or James
James is the more popular boy name in Canada, #8 to #33 in 2024. Elijah is the more popular boy name in England and Wales, #23 to #42 in 2025. James is the more popular boy name in the USA, #5 to #8 in 2024. The two countries disagree on which is ahead.
Place by place
Each place ranks its own registered births, so the two names are compared inside one list at a time, in that place's most recent complete year.
| Place | Year | Elijah | James | Ahead |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Canada | 2024 | #33 | #8 | James |
| England and Wales | 2025 | #23 | #42 | Elijah |
| USA | 2024 | #8 | #5 | James |
| Alberta | 2024 | #22 | #12 | James |
| British Columbia | 2024 | #30 | #18 | James |
| Ontario | 2024 | #26 | #11 | James |
| Quebec | 2024 | #136 | #16 | James |
Elijah and James in Canada, 2020–2024
Elijah climbed from #42 in 2020 to #33 in 2024 in Canada. James climbed from #10 in 2020 to #8 in 2024 in Canada.
Elijah and James in England and Wales, 2020–2025
Elijah climbed from #30 in 2020 to #23 in 2025 in England and Wales. James slipped from #24 in 2020 to #42 in 2025 in England and Wales. Elijah passed James in 2022.
Elijah and James in the USA, 2020–2024
Elijah slipped from #4 in 2020 to #8 in 2024 in the USA. James climbed from #6 in 2020 to #5 in 2024 in the USA. James passed Elijah in 2022.
Other comparisons
How this comparison is built
Both names are ranked by how many babies were registered with that exact spelling, so every position here counts real births rather than votes or searches. Rank is the only measure every source publishes, so it is what the charts plot; birth counts are not released for every place.
A place appears only in the years it published a complete list, which is why a name can be missing from a year it was almost certainly given to some babies. See every head-to-head on the site, or the ranked lists these names come from.