Elija
given name · Latin script
Recorded for both men and women· direction only, no split published
Elija is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Kenya than in any other country. Recorded meaning: Borrowed from English Elijah.
- USUnited States1 in 205K(measured from records)
- LVLatvia1 in 6.3K
- LTLithuania≈1 in 15K
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.
- Kenya (inferred from the name graph)
- Sources
- 126 (measured from records)
- 1 in 6.3K (inferred from the name graph)
≈3,400 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Latvia
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
- EnglishElijah(measured from records)
- HebrewאליהוEliyahu“My God is Yahweh”(inferred from the name graph)via Elijah
Steps marked ◐ come from the entry for the form named above them, not from this name's own sources.
Borrowed from English Elijah.
Sources 2
Attested across 13 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Elija 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| KE Kenya | ≈3,400 est. | ≈1 in 16K | — | Elija | 6 |
| NG Nigeria | ≈2,700 est. | ≈1 in 80K | — | Elija | 18 |
| US United States | 1,623 | 1 in 205K | 1.6K | Elija | 126 |
| TZ Tanzania | ≈690 est. | ≈1 in 85K | — | Elija | 6 |
| ZA South Africa | ≈660 est. | ≈1 in 86K | — | Elija | 6 |
| LV Latvia | 301 | 1 in 6.3K | 326 | — | 1 |
| LT Lithuania | ≈180 est. | ≈1 in 15K | listed | — | — |
| SI Slovenia | 60 | 1 in 35K | 66 | — | — |
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; PMLP — Personu vārdi (given names in population register); PMLP — Personvārdu meklētājs (per-name population-register lookup); SURS — resident population given names; stat.si Imena rojstva — full name register (per-token frequency + rank); the lt-vlkk-vardai register. 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)
Elija 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 Yoruba, a male given name originating from the Bible
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Spanish, inflection of elegir:
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Latvian, Pravietis Izraēlas valstī ķēniņa Ahaba laikā; saskaņā ar Otrās Ķēniņu grām. 2. nod., Elija uzbraucis debesīs ugunīgos ratos; Jaunajā Derībā Eliass
as a wordTēzaurs.lv (Dictionary and Thesaurus of Latvian, AiLab / LU MII)
In Latvian, Sievietes vārds
as a wordTēzaurs.lv (Dictionary and Thesaurus of Latvian, AiLab / LU MII)
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)
- Elia Leibowitzb. 1941ILnot in their usual name1941-born Israeli astrophysicist
- Elija Muchimab. 1957ZMZambian politician
- Elija Valentićb. 1998HRCroatian pole vaulter
- Elija Godwinb. 1999USAmerican athlete
- Elija Ziemb. 2004DEGerman athletics competitor (born 2004)
- Eliasnot in their usual nameSyrian church historian cited by Dionysius of Tell Mahre
- Kwame Owusu DansoGHnot in their usual namepolitician, Ghanaian broadcast journalist, lawyer and musician
- Elija LoftonUSAmerican football player
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).
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 42 sources across 23 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 1.6K | #8,810 |
| LV Latvia | PMLP — Personvārdu meklētājs (per-name population-register lookup) | — | 326 | #720 |
| LV Latvia | PMLP — Personu vārdi (given names in population register) | — | 301 | — |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 73 | #8,810 |
| SI Slovenia | stat.si Imena rojstva — full name register (per-token frequency + rank) | — | 66 | #1,885 |
| SI Slovenia | SURS — resident population given names | 2025 | 60 | #995 |
| SI Slovenia | SURS — resident population given names | 2024 | 55 | #1,038 |
| SI Slovenia | SURS — resident population given names | 2023 | 52 | #1,047 |
| SI Slovenia | SURS — resident population given names | 2022 | 47 | #1,062 |
| SI Slovenia | SURS — resident population given names | 2021 | 39 | #1,184 |
| SI Slovenia | SURS — resident population given names | 2020 | 34 | #1,237 |
| SI Slovenia | SURS — resident population given names | 2019 | 33 | #1,209 |
Reference works 3
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Rymut, Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (10 vols, IJP PAN, Kraków 1992–1994) — every Polish surname in the PESEL register at the end of 1990, with bearer counts nationally and per voivodeship1990
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 Elija mean, and where does it come from?
- Borrowed from English Elijah. Recorded by Wiktionary and Nordic Names.
- Is Elija a male or female name?
- Elija 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.
- What are other forms of the name Elija?
- In the etymology graph, Iliana, Iliyana and Ilinka are forms of the same name in other languages.
- In which country does Elija have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 3.4 thousand people named Elija in Kenya, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled elija.
- Where is Elija most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Elija is densest in Latvia — about 1 in 6.3 thousand people — even though Kenya holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Elija?
- In the United States, the national register counted 1,623 people named Elija in 2020, about 1 in 205 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Elija?
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/elijaThe 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, “Elija”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.