Elena

Popularity, 1880–2025

girls named Elena boys named Elena

By the numbers

Total US births

108,117

Estimated living today

99,000

Median age today

13

Peak year

2025

Best rank

42nd

Rank in 2025

42nd

First recorded

1880

Girls / boys

108,013 / 104

How old the living Elenas are

born that year still alive today

Of the 108,117 babies given the name since 1880, about 99,000 are alive — 92 in every hundred. Roughly 58,000 of them are children and 4,900 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 2012 and half after.

An estimate, not a count. SSA births aged forward through SSA cohort life tables, which know nothing about who left the country or arrived in it — so for a name that mostly came to America rather than being born in it, this is a floor rather than a figure. Where you fall among living Americans.

Where the name comes from

Origin Italian, Spanish, Ancient Greek

and Spanish Elena, cognate to English Helen.

Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Notable Elenas

• Elena Dementieva (born 1981)Russian tennis player
• Elena Ceaușescu (1919–1989)Romanian politician
• Elena Ferrante (born 1943)pseudonymous Italian writer
• Elena Cornaro Piscopia (1646–1684)Venetian philosopher
• Elena Rybakina (born 1999)Kazakhstani tennis player
• Elena Vesnina (born 1986)Russian female tennis player
• Elena of Montenegro (1873–1952)queen consort of Italy (1900-1946) and Servant of God; mother of Umberto II of Italy
• Elena Kagan (born 1960)Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States since 2010

People named Elena with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).

Where Elena is most common

• CA19,430
• TX14,751
• NY8,318
• FL5,343
• IL4,727
• PA3,390
• NJ3,032
• AZ3,003
• OH2,819
• MA2,757

Relative to how many babies each state records, Elena is most concentrated in New Mexico (2.6×), Arizona (2.4×), Nevada (2.3×), Alaska (2.0×).

Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.

Names of 2025

The most popular girls’ names the year Elena peaked:

• Olivia
• Charlotte
• Emma
• Amelia
• Sophia
• Mia

All the names of 2025

Elena elsewhere

Counts come from each country's own records and are not comparable with the US figures above, which cover different years and a different definition of a recorded name. Where a country writes the name several ways, the spellings are added together and the most common is shown. A row marked name registrations is counting something else: Portugal ranks each of a child's two given names separately, so a girl registered Maria Leonor is in both the Maria row and the Leonor row, and that figure is not a number of children.

Elena: births by region

Parts of a country counted above, not extra births. The share is what makes the regions comparable: they differ in size by a factor of three hundred.

By canton, Elena is most concentrated in Uri, where 0.54% of children were given it – 44 of them.

Elena: rank by region

In 2025, Elena was given 5 times or more in 5 regions of Belgium.

In 2020, Elena was among the 10 most common names in 1 region of Spain.

In 2024, Elena was among the 10 most common names in 2 regions of Italy.

In 2025, Elena was given 2 times or more in 16 regions of Poland.

In 2025, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Elena appears in the lists for Province of Limburg (Elena, 15th), Brussels-Capital Region (Elena, 18th), Province of East Flanders (Elena, 18th), Province of Walloon Brabant (Elena, 21st), Province of Hainaut (Elena, 25th), Province of Antwerp (Elena, 27th), Province of West Flanders (Elena, 30th), Province of Liège (Elena, 30th), Province of Flemish Brabant (Elena, 48th), Province of Namur (Eléna, 68th) and Province of Hainaut (Eléna, 117th).

Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children, Spain after 10 names, Italy after 10 names, Poland below 2 children – and published nothing after. So a region missing here is one where the name fell outside what was published, not one where it went unused. Places are shared where names tie, and the further down a list a place is, the more names can share it.

Elena by city

One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.

Elena among the living

How many people each country's register counts under the name, rather than how many were given it in any one year. Each register was read on one date, and they are not the same date.

A count of people on a register – Finland on 4 August 2026, the Netherlands on 1 January 2018 – and not of births, so it cannot be compared with the figures above. Names with very few bearers are withheld, and a dash in the first-forename column means the register would not say rather than that nobody goes by it.

Where Elena lives in Spain

Not a count of births but of people: 161,702 women called Elena were living in Spain on 1 January 2025, of every age, born in any year. Where they live is not spread evenly.

Women: the provinces where it is densest

Listed in 52 of Spain's 52 provinces. The rate is the source's own, not a share worked out here.

Related names

• Eleanor
• Eleanore
• Eleanora
• Eleni
• Eleazar
• Elenora
• Elease
• Elexis
• Elenor
• Elenore
• Eleana
• Eleonora

Elena against another name

Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.

• Elena vs Eleanor
• Elena vs Eleanore
• Elena vs Eleanora
• Elena vs Eleni
• Elena vs Eleazar
• Elena vs Elenora

Compare Elena with a name of your own