Elle
- Pronunciation
- [Elle]
- Gender
- Female
- Meaning
- Abbreviation Of Eleanor And Ellen. Beautiful Fairy
- Origin
- English
About the Name Elle
Elle descends from the French pronoun elle meaning "she" — and is also used as a short form of Eleanor, Ellen, Ella, or other names beginning with El- (see separate entries on Eleanor and Ella). The name has been used as a casual diminutive in English-speaking countries since at least the 19th century.
The name's overwhelming modern cultural anchor is the iconic American fashion magazine Elle (founded in France 1945, US edition 1985 — anchoring the name in fashion culture) and the fictional Elle Woods of Legally Blonde (2001 film and 2003 sequel, played by Reese Witherspoon — anchoring the name as one of the foundational early-2000s American comedy heroines).
Elle's American climb is recent: the name climbed from outside the US top 1000 in 2000 to the US top 300 girls' rank by 2014 and the top 300 since. Notable contemporary bearers include American actress Elle Fanning (born 1998, the American actress whose career through Maleficent, The Great, and Super 8 made her one of the foundational early-21st-century American screen presences); Australian model Elle Macpherson (born 1964, the iconic Australian "The Body" supermodel of the 1980s and 1990s). The name's appeal sits in three contemporary American naming preferences: the compact one-syllable structure, the strong Elle magazine and Legally Blonde Elle Woods cultural anchors, and the modern visual presence. The name reads as both classical-French and contemporary American. Common nicknames are scarce since the name is already short — the rare El, Ellie (a separate but related name), and Ellie-bear each occasionally appear; the longer formal Eleanor, Ellen, Ella, or Eloise are sometimes used as Elle's official-document version. International forms include Elle (the original French pronoun), Ella (the related German/Italian short form), and the broader Eleanor/Ellen/Ella family.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Elle
US Popularity History (2002–2025)
Annual US births named Elle by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 2019 with 890 girls named Elle (girl rank #355 that year).
Where it stands today: in 2025, ranked #461 for girls (668 US births). That's 106 places below its 2019 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 Elle 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 Elle the strongest states are Hawaii, District of Columbia, Massachusetts.
Strongest girls-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Hawaii | #153 | 26 |
| 2 | District of Columbia | #194 | 37 |
| 3 | Massachusetts | #262 | 211 |
| 4 | Utah | #268 | 153 |
| 5 | Connecticut | #274 | 116 |
| 6 | Illinois | #314 | 347 |
| 7 | New York | #324 | 507 |
| 8 | New Jersey | #327 | 233 |
| 9 | Pennsylvania | #327 | 323 |
| 10 | California | #329 | 1,001 |
Weakest girls-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Kentucky | #610 | 51 |
| 2 | Alabama | #587 | 49 |
| 3 | Tennessee | #564 | 110 |
| 4 | Indiana | #558 | 110 |
| 5 | Virginia | #552 | 138 |
| 6 | Georgia | #540 | 181 |
| 7 | North Carolina | #520 | 184 |
| 8 | Mississippi | #503 | 23 |
| 9 | South Carolina | #498 | 69 |
| 10 | Arkansas | #494 | 32 |
Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Elle in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.
Looking for names like Elle?
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 Elle to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Elle against today's most popular girls-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).
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