Ella
- Pronunciation
- [El-la]
- Gender
- Female
- Meaning
- Beautiful Fairy
- Origin
- English
About the Name Ella
Ella has multiple proposed origins, none of which dominates. The most credible Germanic line runs through the Old Germanic Alia (a short form of names containing the element ali or al, meaning "all" or "entire"), passing into medieval English as Ella through the Norman conquest. A separate Hebrew line connects Ella to the word elah meaning "goddess" or "oak tree." A third route — most influential for the name's modern form — has Ella as a short form of names like Eleanor, Ellen, Ellis, or Isabella.
The name appears in 11th-century English records (including the Norman noblewoman Ella of Salisbury) and stayed in continuous if quiet use through the medieval period. The 19th and early 20th centuries gave Ella its most enduring cultural footprint: jazz singer Ella Fitzgerald (1917–1996), one of the defining vocalists of 20th-century American music, whose 13 Grammy Awards and 70-year career anchored the name in American cultural memory. Earlier, novelist Ella Wheeler Wilcox (1850–1919) gave America the line "Laugh, and the world laughs with you / Weep, and you weep alone."
Ella's modern American climb began in the 1990s and pushed it into the US top 15 by 2010. The name's appeal is its compact softness — three letters, two syllables, instantly readable, no spelling debate, working as both a standalone name and a nickname for longer formal names. Common nicknames are scarce because Ella is itself often a nickname; El and Ellie occasionally appear. Direct variants and parallel forms include Ellen, Eleanor, Elena, Eliana, Isabella (where Ella is a common nickname), Stella (where Ella is the second half), and the Spanish/Portuguese Elena.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Ella
US Popularity History (1880–2025)
Annual US births named Ella by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 2010 with 9,883 girls named Ella (girl rank #13 that year).
Where it stands today: in 2025, ranked #29 for girls (5,831 US births). That's 16 places below its 2010 peak.
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.
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Where in the US Is Ella Most Popular?
Average girl-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 girls-name rankings — a per-capita measure that isn't biased toward large states. For Ella the strongest states are Alabama, Louisiana, Kentucky.
Strongest girls-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Alabama | #11 | 1,209 |
| 2 | Louisiana | #12 | 1,053 |
| 3 | Kentucky | #13 | 1,148 |
| 4 | North Dakota | #14 | 260 |
| 5 | Pennsylvania | #14 | 2,779 |
| 6 | Tennessee | #14 | 1,794 |
| 7 | New York | #14 | 4,234 |
| 8 | Mississippi | #15 | 608 |
| 9 | Connecticut | #15 | 878 |
| 10 | Michigan | #15 | 2,050 |
Weakest girls-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | New Mexico | #57 | 220 |
| 2 | Montana | #41 | 168 |
| 3 | District of Columbia | #41 | 173 |
| 4 | Oregon | #36 | 604 |
| 5 | Texas | #35 | 4,994 |
| 6 | Arizona | #33 | 1,131 |
| 7 | Utah | #31 | 795 |
| 8 | Alaska | #30 | 153 |
| 9 | Wyoming | #29 | 98 |
| 10 | Maryland | #29 | 950 |
Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Ella in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.
Variant Forms
Famous People Named Ella
1 notable figure from history and culture who share the name Ella.
- Ella Wheeler Wilcox was one of the most significant American writers.
Looking for names like Ella?
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.
Compare Ella to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Ella against today's most popular girls-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).
Ella Baby Name Ideas
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