Else
given name · Latin script
Meaning, in German: nd. 'alder'; also from river names and plant names
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/ʔɛlzə/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Else is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Denmark than in any other country.
- NLNetherlands1 in 5.3K(measured from records)
- DKDenmark1 in 450
- NONorway1 in 658
carrying the name, as counted by each country's national register. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- Denmark (measured from records)
- Sources
- 230 (measured from records)
- 1 in 450 (inferred from the name graph)
13,047 people
Highest-authority source
Denmark
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
nd. 'alder'; also from river names and plant names
Sources 1
- Deutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
Attested across 14 languages in the etymology graph.
How Else is read(measured from records)
Else is one spelling over 3 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 2 of them. Each row is what a source recorded for that language, beside the share of this name’s records the language holds. No single row is the name’s meaning.
- German37%
nd. 'alder'; also from river names and plant names
as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
from Elisabeth, Hebrew 'my God is an oath'
as a nameDeutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung
weibl. Vom., Kurzform von
as a nameDUDEN Lexikon der Vornamen
- English22%
Hebrew; consecrated to God
as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…
- Danish16%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Else in Danish.
The share is ours — how much of this name’s records each language holds. The sense beside it is the source’s, quoted and credited, including where it names a gender. We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Else counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.
Sorted by bearers: national registers' counts, and Mondonomo's estimates (≈, est.) where no register counts.
13,047 people counted by Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts). Exact figures are national registers' own counts, while figures marked ≈ and est. are Mondonomo’s estimates, counted from our sources and calibrated against those registers; hover one for how far to trust it in that country. A dash means neither exists.
Registers cited: the de-leipzig-vornamen register; SSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891); SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population); Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts); Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018); DVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup); Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population). Figures without a register are Mondonomo estimates; see Methodology.
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table (how that works).
Other recorded senses(measured from records)
Else is also recorded in 2 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In Swedish, Else är en form av → Elisabeth, särskilt vanlig i Norge och Danmark. I den finlandssvenska almanackan 14 oktober.
as a nameFörnamn i Sverige. Kortfattat namnlexikon
Pet form of ELISABETH.
as a nameA concise dictionary of first names
Ordered by how much of this spelling's record each language holds, so a sense from a language the name is barely used in sits last rather than first.
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Else Lasker-Schülerb. 1869DEJewish German poet (1869–1945)
- Elsa Einsteinb. 1876DEnot in their usual namesecond wife and cousin of Albert Einstein (1876-1936)
- Elsa Schiaparellib. 1890ITnot in their usual nameItalian fashion designer and couturier (1890–1973)
- Elsa Trioletb. 1896FRnot in their usual nameRussian-French writer (1896–1970)
- Elsa Lanchesterb. 1902GBnot in their usual nameBritish-American actress (1902–1986)
- Elsa Moranteb. 1912ITnot in their usual nameItalian novelist (1912–1985)
- Viveca Lindforsb. 1920SEnot in their usual nameSwedish actress (1920–1995)
- Elsa Zylbersteinb. 1968FRnot in their usual nameFrench actress
- Elsa Patakyb. 1976ESnot in their usual nameSpanish model and actress
- Elsa Hoskb. 1988SEnot in their usual nameSwedish fashion model
The ten people covered by the most Wikipedia language editions — a proxy for cross-cultural notability, which favours historical and Western figures over equally prominent contemporary ones — shown by birth year. Source: Wikidata (CC0).
How to address them(machine-generated)
A formal English salutation is built on the surname, so it needs a full name — on its own, a first name only supports the informal form.
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 53 sources across 26 countries.
Reference works 4
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- In which country does Else have the most bearers?
- In Denmark, the national register counted about 13 thousand people named Else, more than in any other country we hold.
- Where is Else most common?
- Else is densest in Denmark, where the national register counts about 1 in 450 people carrying it.
- How do you pronounce Else?
- A machine transcription gives /ʔɛlzə/ (IPA) for German.
- Is Else a male or female name?
- Else is a female name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
- What does the name Else mean, and where does it come from?
- nd. 'alder'; also from river names and plant names Recorded by Deutsche Namenkunde: Unsere Familiennamen nach ihrer Entstehung und Bedeutung.
- What are other forms of the name Else?
- In the etymology graph, Elizabeth, Lisa and Isabel are forms of the same name in other languages.
- How common is the name Else?
- In Denmark, the national register counted 13,047 people named Else, about 1 in 450 residents.
- How common is Else compared with other names?
- In Germany, Else is the 607th most common given name of 156,202 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Else?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/elseThe payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. It takes a free API key (1,000 requests a day), which returns what this page shows everyone; the full country table, every register citation and the year-by-year series come with a licensed key, as does bulk access.
About this data
measured from records inferred from the name graph machine-generated
These figures come from the data snapshot of and will change as it is rebuilt.
Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.
Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.
Cite this page Mondonomo, “Else” — the 607th most common given name in Germany. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.