Ely
given name · Latin script
Meaning: ‘person from Ely’, Cambridgeshire; ‘district where eels are found’
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
/eli/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Ely is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the Philippines than in any other country.
- VEVenezuela≈1 in 5K(inferred from the name graph)
- PHPhilippines≈1 in 5.2K
- HNHonduras≈1 in 6.2K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- Philippines (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 228 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 1.8K (inferred from the name graph)
≈21,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Bolivia, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
‘person from Ely’, Cambridgeshire; ‘district where eels are found’
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Often considered alongside
Names that people choosing a name often weigh against Ely, most often first. They share a style rather than an origin.
From the names suggested together in public name-advice forums, in English. A list of what people consider, not a measure of how common any name is.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Ely 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.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| PH Philippines | — | ≈21,000 est. | ≈1 in 5.2K | — | Ely | 53 |
| BO Bolivia | #933 | ≈6,600 est. | ≈1 in 1.8K | — | Ely | 26 |
| BR Brazil | — | 6,314 | 1 in 34K | 6.3K | Ely | 117 |
| VE Venezuela | #683 | ≈5,700 est. | ≈1 in 5K | — | Ely | 40 |
| US United States | — | 5,426 | 1 in 61K | 13K | Ely | 228 |
| HN Honduras | #314 | ≈1,500 est. | ≈1 in 6.2K | — | Ely | 26 |
| RE Réunion | — | ≈75 est. | ≈1 in 11K | 5 | — | 1 |
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: IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror); Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (births by department), dpt 974 (Réunion). 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)
Ely is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In English, from OFr Elie 'Elijah' or from Ely, Cambridgeshire; first attested Hely de Amandeuilla 1150–60
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
In English, island in the fens N of Cambridge. It is so called from OE al eel + ge district. Var.: Ellson. Vars.: Eley, Eal(e)y, Eely.
as a nameThe Oxford Names Companion - The definitive guide to Surnames, First Names, and Place Names of the British Isles
In English, island in the fens N of Cambridge. It is so called from OE cel eel + ge district. Vars. : Eley, Eal(e)y, Eely.
as a nameA dictionary of surnames
In English, A cathedral city and civil parish (served by City of Ely Council) in East Cambridgeshire district, Cambridgeshire, England.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Deus é meu; God is mine
as a nameDicionario Sefaradi De SobrenomesDictionary Of Sephardic Surnames Inclusive Cristaos-Novos, Conversos, Marranos, Italianos,…
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)
- Alfred Ely Beachb. 1826USAmerican businessman (1826–1896)
- Ely Samuel Parkerb. 1828USUnion Army officer and a Commissioner of Indian Affairs (1828-1895)
- Ely Jacques Kahnb. 1884USAmerican architect (1884–1972)
- Ely Culbertsonb. 1891USAmerican contract bridge entrepreneur (1891–1955)
- Ely Jacques Kahn, Jr.b. 1916USAmerican journalist (1916–1994)
- Ely A. Landaub. 1920USAmerican film producer (1920–1993)
- Alí Primerab. 1941VEnot in their usual nameVenezuelan musician (1941–1985)
- Ely Ould Mohamed Vallb. 1953MRMauritanian President (1953-2017)
- Ely Galleanib. 1953ITItalian actress, active years 1970 to 1978
- Ely Pougetb. 1961USAmerican actress and 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 75 sources across 39 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| BR Brazil | IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror) | 2022 | 6.3K | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Nomes (census name API) | — | 5.9K | #3,004 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 4.2K | #3,728 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 3.5K | #2,330 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 2.8K | #2,330 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 1.3K | #3,728 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | 2020 | 65 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 49 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 16 | — |
| RE Réunion | INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (births by department), dpt 974 (Réunion) | 2018 | 5 | #207 |
Reference works 5
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- 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
- What are other forms of the name Ely?
- In the etymology graph, Eli, Heli and Eeli are forms of the same name in other languages.
- How do you pronounce Ely?
- A machine transcription gives /eli/ (IPA) for Spanish.
- What does the name Ely mean, and where does it come from?
- ‘person from Ely’, Cambridgeshire; ‘district where eels are found’ Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- Is Ely a male or female name?
- Ely is recorded for both men and women. We don't publish a percentage split: a record's gender belongs to the person and is attached to every given name on that record, so names in cultures where a name string also carries a parent's or spouse's given name pick up large cross-gender counts.
- In which country does Ely have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 21 thousand people named Ely in the Philippines, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled ely.
- How common is the name Ely?
- In Brazil, the national register counted 6,314 people named Ely in 2022, about 1 in 34 thousand residents.
- How common is Ely compared with other names?
- In Honduras, Ely is the 314th most common given name of 23,588 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Ely?
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/elyThe 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, “Ely” — the 314th most common given name in Honduras. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.