Elijah
About 381,915 American babies have been named Elijah since 1880, most of them around 2011. In 2025 it ranked 7th. About 366,000 Elijahs are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 14.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Elijah boys named Elijah
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 381,915
- Estimated living today
- 366,000
- Median age today
- 14
- Peak year
- 2011
- Best rank
- 13th
- Rank in 2025
- 7th
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 1,304 / 380,611
How old the living Elijahs are
born that year still alive today
Of the 381,915 babies given the name since 1880, about 366,000 are alive — 96 in every hundred. Roughly 234,000 of them are children and 3,100 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 2011 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 Hebrew
From Hebrew אליהו. Compare Joel. See also Arabic إلياس.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Elijahs
- Elijah Wood (born 1981)American actor
- Elijah Muhammad (1897–1975)American religious leader
- Elijah Just (born 2000)New Zealand association football player
- Elijah Winnington (born 2000)Australian swimmer
- Elijah Cummings (1951–2019)American politician
- Elijah Manangoi (born 1993)Kenyan athletics competitor and middle-distance runner
- Elijah Burke (born 1978)American professional wrestler
- Elijah Kelley (born 1986)American actor and singer
People named Elijah with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Elijah is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Elijah is most concentrated in Nevada (2.3×), Alaska (2.0×), Florida (1.8×), New Mexico (1.7×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 2011
The most popular boys’ names the year Elijah peaked:
Elijah elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| England and Wales boys | Elijah | 24,028 | 30th |
| France boys | Elijah +2 spellings | 4,160 | 199th |
| New Zealand boys | Elijah | 3,108 | 23rd |
| Scotland boys | Elijah | 819 | 66th |
| Ireland boys | Elijah | 741 | 102nd |
| Belgium boys | Elijah | 696 | 194th |
| Switzerland boys | Elijah | 662 | 186th |
| Northern Ireland boys | Elijah | 635 | 57th |
| France girls | Elijah | 295 | 2,402nd |
| Poland boys | Elijah | 42 birth registrations | 389th |
| England and Wales girls | Elijah | 15 | 5,765th |
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.
Elijah: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German boys | Switzerland | Elijah | 518 | 0.042% | 170th |
| French boys | Switzerland | Elijah | 140 | 0.032% | 170th |
| Italian boys | Switzerland | Elijah | 3 | 0.005% | 180th |
| Romansh boys | Switzerland | Elijah | 1 | 0.027% | 11th |
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, Elijah is most concentrated in Solothurn, where 0.06% of children were given it – 29 of them.
Elijah: rank by region
In 2025, Elijah was given 5 times or more in 3 regions of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Elijah | 174 | 34 |
| Wallonia | Elijah | 218 | 13 |
| Brussels | Elijah | 187 | 7 |
In 2025, Elijah was given 2 times or more in 1 region of Poland.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wielkopolskie | Elijah | 248 | 2 |
In 2025, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Elijah appears in the lists for Province of West Flanders (162nd), Province of Antwerp (163rd), Province of Hainaut (174th), Province of Flemish Brabant (177th), Brussels-Capital Region (187th) and Province of East Flanders (198th).
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children, 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.
Elijah by city
| City | Years | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin boys | 2017–2023 | 63 | 184th |
One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.
Elijah 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.
| Country | Spelling | First forename | Any forename |
|---|---|---|---|
| Finland boys | Elijah | 108 | 220 |
A count of people on a register – Finland on 4 August 2026 – 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.
Related names
Elijah against another name
Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.
Try it on yourself
Source: US Social Security Administration, national and state baby-name files, 1880–2025. Counts include only births registered with the SSA, and names with fewer than five births in a year are not published. The living estimate applies SSA cohort life tables to those births; it counts people born in the United States, so it misses anyone who arrived later and anyone who has left.