Ilija
given name · Latin script
A male name· listed as male by the registers that count names by sex
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 26 countries · latest register: DZS, 2021
Ilija is a male given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Croatia than in any other country, where it is the 88th most common given name. Recorded meaning: From Old Church Slavonic Илїа (Ilia), from Ancient Greek Ἠλίᾱς (Ēlíās), from Hebrew אֵלִיָּהוּ (eliyáhu, “Yahweh is god”).
- MKNorth Macedonia≈1 in 380few records(inferred from the name graph)
- HRCroatia1 in 497
- RSSerbia≈1 in 840
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.
- Croatia (measured from records)
- Record sources
- 117 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 377 (inferred from the name graph)
8,508 people, 2021
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
North Macedonia, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)- Old Church SlavonicИлїаIlia(measured from records)
- Ancient GreekἨλίᾱςĒlíās(measured from records)
- 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”).
Cited for this meaning 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.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| HR Croatia | #88 | 8,508 | 1 in 497 | 8.5K | Ilija | 96 |
| RS Serbia | #118 | ≈7,800 est. | ≈1 in 842 | — | Ilija | 57 |
| MK North Macedonia | #144 | ≈4,800 est. | ≈1 in 377 | — | Ilija | 46 |
| DE Germany | — | ≈1,500 est. | ≈1 in 54K | 3 | Ilija | 96 |
| BA Bosnia & Herzegovina | #100 | ≈1,500 est. | ≈1 in 2.1K | — | Ilija | 32 |
| ME Montenegro | #72 | ≈680 est. | ≈1 in 920 | — | Ilija | 21 |
8,508 people counted by DZS — Imena i prezimena (per-token lookup form), 2021. 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 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)- Ilija Garašaninb. 1812RSSerbian politician (1812-1874)
- Ilija Pantelićb. 1942HRfootball goalkeeper from Serbia (1942-2014)
- Ilija Petkovićb. 1945RSSerbian footballer (1945-2020)
- Ilija Najdoskib. 1964MKMacedonian footballer (born 1964)
- Ilija Trojanowb. 1965BGGerman writer
- Ilija Lupuleskub. 1967RStable tennis player
- Ilija Ivićb. 1971RSSerbian footballer
- Ilija Bozoljacb. 1985RSSerbian tennis player
- Ilija Spasojevićb. 1987MEIndonesian footballer
- Ilija Nestorovskib. 1990MKMacedonian footballer (born 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).
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)48 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 26 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| HR Croatia | DZS — Imena i prezimena (per-token lookup form) | 2021 | 8.5K | #123 |
| HR Croatia | DZS — Učestalost osobnih imena (Popis 2021) | 2021 | 6.2K | — |
| DE Germany | Stadt Düsseldorf Open Data — Vornamen Neugeborene | 2020 | 3 | — |
| DE Germany | Stadt Leipzig Open Data — Vornamensstatistik Neugeborene | 2021 | 2 | #1 |
| DE Germany | Stadt München Open Data — Vornamen von Nulljährigen | 2024 | — | — |
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. National registers that list it by sex list it as male: United States (Census Bureau, 2020), Slovenia (stat.si Imena rojstva), Kosovo (ASK Kosovo) and Austria (Statistik Austria, 2024), among others.
- 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?
- In Croatia, the national register counted about 8.5 thousand people named Ilija, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled ilija.
- 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 Croatia, Ilija is the 88th most common given name of 14,066 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Ilija?
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/ilijaThe 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 88th most common given name in Croatia. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.