Eloise: Meaning of Baby Name Eloise

About the Name Eloise

Eloise descends through Old French Héloïse from the medieval Frankish Helewidis (or Helewise), composed of Germanic roots possibly meaning "healthy" and "wide." An alternative reading derives Eloise from the same root as Louise — a feminine form of Louis ("famous warrior"). The name's medieval anchor is the romantic-tragic story of Héloïse d'Argenteuil (1101–1164), the brilliant 12th-century French scholar who became the lover of her teacher Peter Abelard — one of the great medieval philosophers — and after their secret marriage and the brutal castration of Abelard by her uncle, became an abbess. Their later letters constitute one of the foundational texts of medieval European romantic love.

The single most influential modern bearer is the children's-book character Eloise, the irrepressible six-year-old heroine of Kay Thompson's 1955 picture book Eloise: A Book for Precocious Grown-ups (illustrated by Hilary Knight) — a much-loved American children's classic about a young girl who lives in the Plaza Hotel. Eloise's mischievous spirit anchors the name in 20th-century American children's-literature memory.

The contemporary American Eloise surge is part of the broader vintage-revival wave alongside Eleanor and Adeline. The name climbed from outside the US top 500 in 2005 to the US top 100 girls' rank by 2018 and the top 75 by 2022. The name's appeal is its layered French-medieval register combined with three flowing syllables that read as both classical and approachable. Common nicknames Ellie (now itself a popular standalone name), Elle, Lulu, Wee, and the rare Heloise each carry distinct registers; the longer formal Heloise (with the H, the older French spelling) is sometimes used as Eloise's official-document version. International forms include Héloïse (French original), Eloisa (Italian/Spanish), Heloíza (Portuguese), and the related Louise family across European languages.

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

Quick Facts About Eloise

1,414

French baby names in our dictionary

843

French female names

215

6-letter E-names in our dictionary

486

E-female names total

2008–2025

years of US SSA records (18 total)

30,818

total US births named Eloise (all years)

US Popularity History (2008–2025)

🔥 Rising fast: Eloise climbed 88 places in the US girls ranking over the last 5 years (#137 in 2020 → #49 in 2025).

Annual US births named Eloise by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 2025 with 4,251 girls named Eloise (girl rank #49 that year).

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 Eloise 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 Eloise the strongest states are Vermont, Minnesota, Maine.

Strongest girls-name states

#	State	Avg rank	Births
1	Vermont	#43	76
2	Minnesota	#60	700
3	Maine	#62	158
4	Wisconsin	#65	640
5	New Hampshire	#70	170
6	Massachusetts	#82	651
7	District of Columbia	#82	119
8	Oregon	#83	351
9	Michigan	#83	876
10	Rhode Island	#84	90

Weakest girls-name states

#	State	Avg rank	Births
1	Mississippi	#360	92
2	Nevada	#276	112
3	Alabama	#246	237
4	Arizona	#244	313
5	Texas	#244	1,379
6	Florida	#236	907
7	Arkansas	#231	146
8	New Mexico	#227	39
9	Georgia	#216	508
10	Oklahoma	#215	200

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

Variant Forms

Name	Meaning	Gender	Origin
Ellie	Abbreviation Of Eleanor And Ellen.	Female	English
Heloise	French Form Of Louise	Female	French

Looking for names like Eloise?

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 Eloise to Other Popular Names

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

Eloise vs Olivia 210,124 births since 2014

Eloise vs Emma 202,477 births since 2014

Eloise vs Sophia 169,709 births since 2014

Eloise vs Isabella 158,431 births since 2014

Eloise vs Ava 157,356 births since 2014

Eloise vs Charlotte 151,872 births since 2014

Eloise vs Mia 149,779 births since 2014

Eloise vs Amelia 142,728 births since 2014

Compare to a different name →