Ilija

given name · Latin script

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

Ilija is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Serbia than in any other country. In Montenegro it is the 72nd most common given name. Recorded meaning: From Old Church Slavonic Илїа (Ilia), from Ancient Greek Ἠλίᾱς (Ēlíās), from Hebrew אֵלִיָּהוּ (eliyáhu, “Yahweh is god”).

rarermore common
  • HRCroatia1 in 497(measured from records)
  • RSSerbia≈1 in 697
  • DEGermany≈1 in 49K

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.

Serbia (inferred from the name graph)

≈10,000 people, est.

Sources
117 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

1 in 497 (inferred from the name graph)

Croatia

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

Derivation of Ilija: each step is the form the one above it came from.
Ilija
  1. Old Church SlavonicИлїаIlia(measured from records)
  2. Ancient GreekἨλίᾱςĒlíās(measured from records)
  3. Hebrewאֵלִיָּהוּeliyáhu“Yahweh is god”(measured from records)

From Old Church Slavonic Илїа (Ilia), from Ancient Greek Ἠλίᾱς (Ēlíās), from Hebrew אֵלִיָּהוּ (eliyáhu, “Yahweh is god”).

Sources 2

Attested across 18 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Ilija 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 Ilija is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
RS Serbia#118≈10,000 est.≈1 in 697—Ilija57
HR Croatia#888,5081 in 4978.5KIlija96
BA Bosnia & Herzegovina#100≈1,800 est.≈1 in 2.2K—Ilija32
DE Germany—≈1,600 est.≈1 in 49K3Ilija96
MK North Macedonia#144≈1,100 est.≈1 in 2K—Ilija46
ME Montenegro#72≈230 est.≈1 in 2.6K—Ilija21

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: DZS — Imena i prezimena (per-token lookup form); the de-duesseldorf-vornamen 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 names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Ilija is also recorded as 3 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • French given name3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, Serbia, Belgium, United States

    Also written Ilïja

  • a separate name2 spellings in the group

    Also written Ilijâ

  • Russian given name4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Russia, Kyrgyzstan, United States, Serbia

    Languages: Russian, Ukrainian

    Also written Iļija

34 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)

Ilija is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • 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)

18001850190019502000Ilija Garašanin, b. 1812Ilija Pantelić, b. 1942Ilija Petković, b. 1945Ilija Najdoski, b. 1964Ilija Trojanow, b. 1965Ilija Lupulesku, b. 1967Ilija Ivić, b. 1971Ilija Bozoljac, b. 1985Ilija Spasojević, b. 1987Ilija Nestorovski, b. 1990

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 48 sources across 26 countries.

Official registers attesting Ilija
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
HR CroatiaDZS — Imena i prezimena (per-token lookup form)20218.5K#123
HR CroatiaDZS — Učestalost osobnih imena (Popis 2021)20216.2K—
DE GermanyStadt Düsseldorf Open Data — Vornamen Neugeborene20203—
DE GermanyStadt Leipzig Open Data — Vornamensstatistik Neugeborene20212#1
DE GermanyStadt München Open Data — Vornamen von Nulljährigen2024——

Reference works 2

  • 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

Is Ilija a male or female name?
Ilija 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.
What does the name Ilija mean, and where does it come from?
From Old Church Slavonic Илїа (Ilia), from Ancient Greek Ἠλίᾱς (Ēlíās), from Hebrew אֵלִיָּהוּ (eliyáhu, “Yahweh is god”). Recorded by Wiktionary and Nordic Names.
What are other forms of the name Ilija?
In the etymology graph, Elias, Ilyas and Elijah are forms of the same name in other languages.
In which country does Ilija have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 10 thousand people named Ilija in Serbia, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled ilija.
Where is Ilija most common?
Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Ilija is densest in Croatia — about 1 in 497 people — even though Serbia holds more of our records for it.
How common is the name Ilija?
In Croatia, the national register counted 8,508 people named Ilija in 2021, about 1 in 497 residents.
How common is Ilija compared with other names?
In Serbia, Ilija is the 118th most common given name of 10,960 given names recorded there.

What do you want to know about Ilija?

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

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, “Ilija” — the 118th most common given name in Serbia. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Ilija parses inside a full name →