Ilya

given name · Latin script

Meaning: From Greek Elias, the name used in the New Testament for the prophet Elijah ‘Yahweh is God’

Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

/ˈɪɫjə/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated

Ilya is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Russia than in any other country, where it is the 50th most common given name.

rarermore common
  • RURussia≈1 in 186as Илья(inferred from the name graph)
  • GEGeorgia1 in 204as ილია
  • SESweden1 in 282as Elias

carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Ilya itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.

Russia (inferred from the name graph)

≈760,000 named Илья, est.

#114 (measured from records)

of 15M given names

9 (measured from records)

recorded for this name

Sources
455 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 186 (inferred from the name graph)

Russia, est., as Илья

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Spellings & scripts(measured from records)

ИльяCyrillic(measured from records)
EliasLatin(measured from records)
איליהHebrew(measured from records)
ΗλιαςGreek(measured from records)
ইলিয়াসBengali(measured from records)
ილიაGeorgian(measured from records)
อิลยัสThai(measured from records)
ኢሊያስEthiopic(measured from records)
ԵղիաArmenian(measured from records)

8 other spellings are counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Elias in BR Brazil, US United States, FI Finland and 1 more, Илья in RU Russia, BY Belarus, CN China, Ilyas in TR Türkiye and Ilia in GE Georgia.

Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records, and ○ marks a model's transliteration; click a spelling to open its page.

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

From Greek Elias, the name used in the New Testament for the prophet Elijah ‘Yahweh is God’.

Sources 1

  • A concise dictionary of first names

Attested across 21 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Ilya 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.

Where Ilya is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
RU Russia#50≈760,000 est.≈1 in 186#26Илья252
BR Brazil#99190,432as Elias1 in 1.1K191KElias220
US United States#67288,033as Elias1 in 3.8K88KElias455
CN China—≈69,000 est.≈1 in 20K—Илья16
TR Türkiye#141≈66,000 est.≈1 in 1.2K—Ilyas110
SE Sweden#38636,200as Elias1 in 28236KElias84
BY Belarus#40≈33,000 est.≈1 in 2833Илья72
FI Finland—29,626as Elias1 in 18837KElias42
GE Georgia#7619,622as ილია1 in 20420KIlia72

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); IBGE — Nomes (census name API); Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; 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); Universal Dependencies Belarusian-HSE Corpus — Person Names (UD_Belarusian-HSE); Georgia PSDA/SDA civil-registry name statistics (per-token API). 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 names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Ilya is also recorded as 5 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Turkish given name6 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Türkiye, Turkmenistan, Russia, United States

    Languages: Turkish, Turkmen, Azerbaijani

    Also written Ilýa, Îlŷä

  • Indonesian given name4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Indonesia, Malaysia, Russia, United States

    Also written Il'Ya, Ilyà

  • a separate name6 spellings in the group

    Also written Il'Ya, Il’ya, Ilyá, Īlyā, Ilyā

  • Italian given name3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Italy, United States, Russia, United Kingdom

    Also written Ilja, Iļja

  • a separate given name4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Russia, United States, India, United Kingdom

    Also written Îlyã, Îlÿâ, Ilyã

31 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Other recorded senses(measured from records)

Ilya is also recorded in 4 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • In English, Russian form of Elijah; the Lord is God

    as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…

  • a mythical tree of paradise

    as a nameThe Penguin book of Hindu names for boys

  • In zku, snake, in particular the red-bellied black snake

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

  • Russian form of Elias (see ELLIS ).

    as a word

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)

18001850190019502000Ilya Ulyanov, b. 1831Ilia Repin, b. 1844Élie Metchnikoff, b. 1845Ilya Ehrenburg, b. 1891Ilya Frank, b. 1908Ilya Prigogine, b. 1917Ilya Piatetski-Shapiro, b. 1929Ilya Oleynikov, b. 1947Elya Baskin, b. 1950Ilya Ponomarev, b. 1975
  • Ilya Ulyanovb. 1831RURussian teacher, father of Vladimir Lenin (1831-1886)
  • Ilia Repinb. 1844UAnot in their usual nameRussian-empire painter of Ukrainian birth (1844-1930)
  • Élie Metchnikoffb. 1845FRnot in their usual nameRussian-French immunologist, embryologist, biologist
  • Ilya Ehrenburgb. 1891UASoviet writer, Bolshevik revolutionary, journalist and historian (1891–1967)
  • Ilya Frankb. 1908RUSoviet physicist
  • Ilya Prigogineb. 1917BERussian-Belgian physical chemist (1917–2003)
  • Ilya Piatetski-Shapirob. 1929RURussian mathematician (1929–2009)
  • Ilya Oleynikovb. 1947RUSoviet and Russian comic actor and television personality (1947-2012)
  • Elya Baskinb. 1950USnot in their usual nameRussian actor
  • Ilya Ponomarevb. 1975RURussian-Ukrainian politician and entrepreneur

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)

FormalDear Colleague,
InformalHello,

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 52 sources across 29 countries.

Official registers attesting Ilya
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex20205.3K#3,690
FI FinlandDVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup)—389#1,243
SE SwedenSkatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population)—245#4,526
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex2020229#3,690
SE SwedenSCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023)2020165—
FI FinlandDVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register)—112—
US United StatesSSA — National Baby Names (1880–present)202538—
FI FinlandDVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup)—30#11,587
US United StatesSSA — National Baby Names (1880–present)202526—
BR BrazilIBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror)202223—

Reference works 4

  • Dictionary of American Family Names
  • Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
  • Wikipedia given-name 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 does the name Ilya mean, and where does it come from?
From Greek Elias, the name used in the New Testament for the prophet Elijah ‘Yahweh is God’. Recorded by A concise dictionary of first names.
Is Ilya a male or female name?
Ilya is a male 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.
How do you pronounce Ilya?
A machine transcription gives /ˈɪɫjə/ (IPA) for Russian.
What are other forms of the name Ilya?
In the etymology graph, Elias, Elijah and Elia are forms of the same name in other languages.
In which country does Ilya have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 764 thousand people named Илья in Russia, more than in any other country we hold.
How common is the name Ilya?
In Brazil, the national register counted 190,432 people named Elias in 2022, about 1 in 1.1 thousand residents.
How common is Ilya compared with other names?
In Russia, Ilya is the 50th most common given name of 472,143 given names recorded there.

What do you want to know about Ilya?

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Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/ilya

The 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, “Ilya” — the 50th most common given name in Russia. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Ilya parses inside a full name →