Nelly

Where Nelly comes from

Nelly hasn't made it into the dictionaries we draw on, and nobody well known enough for an encyclopedia has carried it yet — so for now its story is the one the SSA record tells. Names that spell a familiar sound a new way often live here for a while before anyone writes them down.

  • Vowel-ended
Along the way
  1. 1882
    Debut at its peak, #596
    #596 among girls with 10 babies — the first year it was published, and still its best.
  2. 1884
    The fade
    The first year with half the peak's births.
  3. 1891
    Nelly Sachs born
    Jewish German poet and playwright
  4. 1978
    Nelly Furtado born
    Portuguese-Canadian singer and songwriter
In the dictionary

No dictionary entry for this spelling — which is its own kind of rare.

Namesakes
  • Nelly Sachs · Jewish German poet and playwright, 1891–1970
  • Nelly Furtado · Portuguese-Canadian singer and songwriter, born 1978
  • Nelly Ciobanu · Moldovan singer, born 1974
  • Nelly Kaplan · French filmmaker and writer, 1931–2020
  • Nelly Korda · American golfer, born 1998

Sources: the origin note and dictionary entry are quoted from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 4.0); the namesakes come from Wikidata (CC0); the milestones are worked out from the SSA record.