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The cool thing about Ellen is it's Nelle spelled backward. Nelle Harper Lee, the author of To Kill a Mockingbird, was named after her grandmother Ellen. So if you're looking to honor an Ellen, Nelle could be an option.

Ellen! I love Ellen. It has been my favorite name for decades. I guess I like that it's short and sweet but also a no nonsense name. Recently I've been more into Elna though. It has the same vibe but without the popularity of Ellen.
Helen is fine but seems dated to me.

Helen

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I admire Ellen's workaday staidness, but it's a bit too dull for me.

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I love how unwieldy Helen's history is.

Helen

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I like both, it's a hard choice, but ultimately Helen is more mature and graceful.

Helen. Ellen is kind of frumpy, in a good-natured way.

Hate both, but Ellen is more friendlier and approachable, but it's dated. Helen sounds very unfriendly and cold hearted to me.

This message was edited 7/14/2021, 12:51 PM

Ellen

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Becaue I actually like it a lot. Helen sounds elderly and stiff to me, and also has the unattractive hell sound.

I much prefer Ellen. The H seems to date the name in an unpleasant way. Though, the variant Helene is gorgeous and carries none of the dated-ness of either Ellen or Helen.

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I will also note that I think Ellen is much more grounded than the popular Elle and Ella in vogue right now.
I would admittedly call either an Ellen or a Helen by the nickname Ellie though.

Helen, every time and all the way. Ellen has never been used much where I live, and though I like Eleanor, Elinor etc a lot, it's never appealed to me. Too many Victorian and Edwardian authors used it for housemaids! Helen has a wonderful pedigree, right back to Troy; granted, a friend's parents wanted to name their youngest daughter Helen but took a calm, thoughtful look at her siblings and decided that it would instantly be shortened to Hel(l), and since their father was a Baptist minister, they went for Eleanor instead. But it's a chance I'd happily take.

Ohh. Ellen is a family name for me so I do like it, but I prefer Helen. I'd choose that one, because I love the idea of "Hel" as a nickname much more than El or Ellie. Helen seems feistier to me than Ellen. Helen is a rusty red sort of colour, while Ellen is cool and watery.

Helen. Classy and uncommon nowadays. I only know one my age and that's a huge age gap between other Helen's that I know.

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Ellen I have a bad personal association with. I like it, it's just...I could never use it. I have to forgive that person, I'm trying so hard. We also have Ellen DeGeneres who I'm not the biggest fan of. She did a lot for the LGBTQ community, which was cool and all, but I'm not a fan of *her*. Ellen is a very solid name, though.