Elijah: Meaning of Baby Name Elijah

About the Name Elijah

Elijah is the English form of the Hebrew Eliyahu, composed of El (God) and a verbal form of Yahweh, together meaning "my God is Yahweh" — a theological assertion as much as a name. The biblical Elijah is one of the most consequential figures in the Hebrew Bible: a 9th-century BCE prophet of the Northern Kingdom of Israel, recorded in 1 and 2 Kings as the rival of the prophets of Baal, the mentor of Elisha, and the only major prophet whose narrative ends not in death but in ascent to heaven in a fiery chariot.

The name's later cultural footprint extends well beyond Judaism. In Christian tradition, Elijah appears alongside Moses at the Transfiguration, and Christian eschatology positions him as a forerunner of the Messiah. In Islam, Ilyas (the Arabic form) is recognized as a prophet. In Jewish Passover tradition, every Seder includes a poured cup of wine for Elijah, in case he should arrive that night to herald redemption.

Despite this enormous traditional weight, Elijah was rare in the United States until the late 1990s, when it began a steady climb that placed it in the modern US top 10 by the late 2010s — part of the broader return to long-form Old Testament names alongside Noah, Ezra, and Isaiah. Modern bearers include actor Elijah Wood (Frodo in Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings) and Elijah McCoy, the 19th-century Black Canadian-American inventor whose precision lubricators gave rise to the phrase "the real McCoy." Common nicknames are Eli (now widely used as an independent name), Lijah, and the more formal Elias; international forms include Eliyahu (Hebrew), Ilyas (Arabic), Élie (French), and Elia (Italian).

Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.

Quick Facts About Elijah

1,531

Hebrew baby names in our dictionary

695

Hebrew male names

215

6-letter E-names in our dictionary

459

E-male names total

1995–2025

years of US SSA records (31 total)

345,561

total US births named Elijah (all years)

US Popularity History (1995–2025)

➖ Steady: Elijah slipped 3 places in the US boys ranking over the last 5 years (#4 in 2020 → #7 in 2025).

Annual US births named Elijah by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 2011 with 13,997 boys named Elijah (boy rank #13 that year).

Where it stands today: in 2025, ranked #7 for boys (11,111 US births). That's 6 places above its earlier 2011 peak — the name is more popular now than it has ever been.

Source: US Social Security Administration. Limitations: US birth-certificate data only; names appearing fewer than 5 times in a given year are suppressed for privacy; spelling variants are counted separately. For names that ranked outside the US top 100 before year 2000, only the years they reached the top 100 are shown — the chart may have gaps for less-popular historical names.

Where in the US Is Elijah Most Popular?

Average boy-name rank within each state across 2016–2025 SSA records. A lower number means the name appears closer to the top of that state's boys-name rankings — a per-capita measure that isn't biased toward large states. For Elijah the strongest states are Arkansas, Louisiana, New Mexico.

Strongest boys-name states

#	State	Avg rank	Births
1	Arkansas	#3	1,358
2	Louisiana	#3	2,113
3	New Mexico	#4	821
4	Oklahoma	#4	1,558
5	Florida	#4	8,344
6	Kentucky	#4	2,098
7	Georgia	#4	4,538
8	Mississippi	#4	1,347
9	Indiana	#4	2,792
10	Tennessee	#5	3,344

Weakest boys-name states

#	State	Avg rank	Births
1	New Jersey	#41	1,803
2	Massachusetts	#34	1,549
3	Utah	#34	919
4	Montana	#32	222
5	New York	#32	4,298
6	Vermont	#32	121
7	Connecticut	#30	866
8	District of Columbia	#28	263
9	New Hampshire	#26	338
10	Maine	#26	299

Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Elijah in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.

Variant Forms

Name	Meaning	Gender	Origin
Eli	Ascended Or My God. The Biblical High Priest Eli Judged Israel For 40 Years And Instructed The Young Samuel.	Male	Hebrew
Elias	My God Is Jehovah. Variant Of Hebrew Elijah.	Male	Spanish
Eliot	Believes In God	Male	French
Elliot	Variant Of Elijah My God Is Jehovah.	Male	English

Famous People Named Elijah

1 notable figure from history and culture who share the name Elijah.

Elijah Wood — Movie Actor (1981)

Browse more famous Elijahs and similar first names →

Looking for names like Elijah?

A dedicated page with 60+ related names — spelling variants, rhymes, alliterations, same-origin matches, and shared meaning concepts — lives at its own URL so each kind of similarity gets a deeper treatment than fits here.

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Compare Elijah to Other Popular Names

Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Elijah against today's most popular boys-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).

Elijah vs Liam 239,320 births since 2014

Elijah vs Noah 230,181 births since 2014

Elijah vs Oliver 164,076 births since 2014

Elijah vs William 159,918 births since 2014

Elijah vs James 157,850 births since 2014

Elijah vs Benjamin 147,449 births since 2014

Elijah vs Lucas 141,302 births since 2014

Elijah vs Mason 134,038 births since 2014

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