Elisha
Elisha reached its high-water mark in 2008 at number 630, and has been recorded 30,034 times in all. It is given to both boys and girls. In 2025 it ranked 788th. About 26,000 Elishas are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 28.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Elisha boys named Elisha
Girls and boys called Elisha
years more girls than boys years more boys than girls
Elisha crossed from girls to boys in 1996, having already crossed in 1960, and has stayed there for 30 of the years counted since. At its furthest it was 85% boys, which is roughly where it still is.
The girls’ share of each year’s babies of the name, in the 134 years in which at least 25 babies got it. The line touches the middle more often than there are crossings marked: a year or two on the other side is not a name changing hands, and only a move that holds for 5 counted years and reaches 60/40 is recorded as one. All 581 names that changed sex.
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 30,034
- Estimated living today
- 26,000
- Median age today
- 28
- Peak year
- 2008
- Best rank
- 630th
- Rank in 2025
- 788th
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 14,366 / 15,668
How old the living Elishas are
born that year still alive today
Of the 30,034 babies given the name since 1880, about 26,000 are alive — 87 in every hundred. Roughly 7,700 of them are children and 710 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1997 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
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Elishas
- Elisha Cuthbert (born 1982)Canadian actress
- Elisha Otis (1811–1861)Founder of Otis Elevator Co.
- Elisha Gray (1835–1901)American electrical engineer
- Elisha Owusu (born 1997)Ghanaian and French association football player
- Elisha Cook Jr. (1903–1995)American actor
- Elisha Kent Kane (1820–1857)American explorer and military medical officer
- Elisha Scott (1894–1959)Irish footballer
- Elisha P. Ferry (1825–1895)American politician
People named Elisha with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Elisha is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Elisha is most concentrated in Florida (2.0×), Georgia (1.9×), Tennessee (1.6×), North Carolina (1.5×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 2008
The most popular boys’ names the year Elisha peaked:
Elisha elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| England and Wales girls | Elisha | 4,530 | 132nd |
| England and Wales boys | Elisha | 550 | 882nd |
| Ireland girls | Elisha | 395 | 206th |
| France girls | Elisha +1 spelling | 335 | 1,465th |
| Scotland girls | Elisha | 184 | 274th |
| France boys | Elisha | 145 | 2,126th |
| Switzerland boys | Elisha | 102 | 599th |
| Switzerland girls | Elisha | 96 | 577th |
| Northern Ireland girls | Elisha | 95 | 155th |
| Belgium girls | Elisha | 51 | 1,179th |
| Ireland boys | Elisha | 3 | 451st |
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.
Elisha: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German boys | Switzerland | Elisha | 98 | 0.008% | 434th |
| German girls | Switzerland | Elisha | 85 | 0.007% | 453rd |
| French girls | Switzerland | Elisha | 11 | 0.003% | 509th |
| French boys | Switzerland | Elisha | 4 | 0.001% | 618th |
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, Elisha is most concentrated in Aargau, where 0.02% of children were given it – 34 of them.
Elisha: rank by region
In 2014, Elisha was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Elisha | 863 | 5 |
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 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.
Elisha 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 girls | Elisha | 6 | 10 |
| Finland boys | Elisha | 7 | 7 |
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
Elisha 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.