Elgar
given name · Latin script
Meaning: From the medieval male personal name Alger, of mixed Old English, Old Norse and Norman ancestry; second syllable ‘spear’, first often ‘elf’, sometimes ‘noble’ or ‘old’
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/elɡaɾ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Elgar is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Peru than in any other country.
- PEPeru≈1 in 41K(inferred from the name graph)
- USUnited States1 in 1.4M
- HNHonduras≈1 in 23K
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.
- Peru (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 130 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 23K (inferred from the name graph)
≈790 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Honduras, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
From the medieval male personal name Alger, of mixed Old English, Old Norse and Norman ancestry; second syllable ‘spear’, first often ‘elf’, sometimes ‘noble’ or ‘old’
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Elgar 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.
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: Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Statistics Estonia — per-name Population Register counts (nimed). 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)
Elgar 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, A male given name from Old English.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In English, Sir Edward, English composer
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
In Faroese, nominative plural of elgur
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Norwegian Nynorsk, indefinite plural of elg
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Basque, "Calentura, fiebre. Recibido también por la misma vía [literaria]. Ezarrixa dago elgarrakin, está muy cargado con la fiebre" Etxba Eib .
as a wordOrotariko Euskal Hiztegia (OEH) — General/Historical Basque Dictionary, Euskaltzaindia
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)
- Elgar von Randowb. 1904DEGerman diplomat (1904-1977)
- Neal E. Millerb. 1909USnot in their usual nameAmerican psychologist and academic (1909-2002)
- Elgar Howarthb. 1935GBEnglish conductor, composer and trumpeter (1935–2025)
- Mark James Elgar Coodeb. 1937GBEnglish botanist
- Elgar Baezab. 1939UYUruguayan association football player (1939–2020)
- Elgar Fleischb. 1968ATAustrian computer scientist and professor at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zurich
- Elgar Wattsb. 1985ZASouth African rugby union footballer
- Elgar Barboza CastilloPEPeruvian engineer
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 37 sources across 23 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 253 | #76,029 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 249 | #81,829 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 245 | #73,659 |
| US United States | wru Name Dictionary — US surnames, Census 2010 subset (Khanna et al.) | — | — | — |
Reference works 1
- 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 Elgar mean, and where does it come from?
- From the medieval male personal name Alger, of mixed Old English, Old Norse and Norman ancestry; second syllable ‘spear’, first often ‘elf’, sometimes ‘noble’ or ‘old’ Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- How do you pronounce Elgar?
- A machine transcription gives /elɡaɾ/ (IPA) for Spanish.
- Is Elgar a male or female name?
- Elgar 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.
- In which country does Elgar have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 785 people named Elgar in Peru, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled elgar.
- How common is the name Elgar?
- In the United States, the national register counted 232 people named Elgar in 2020, about 1 in 1.4 million residents.
What do you want to know about Elgar?
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/elgarThe 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, “Elgar”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.