Eli
Eli reached its high-water mark in 2012 at number 43, and has been recorded 154,512 times in all. In 2025 it ranked 104th. About 143,000 Elis are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 12.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Eli boys named Eli
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 154,512
- Estimated living today
- 143,000
- Median age today
- 12
- Peak year
- 2012
- Best rank
- 43rd
- Rank in 2025
- 104th
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 1,017 / 153,495
How old the living Elis are
born that year still alive today
Of the 154,512 babies given the name since 1880, about 143,000 are alive — 93 in every hundred. Roughly 105,000 of them are children and 1,800 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 2013 and half after.
An estimate, not a count. SSA births aged forward through SSA cohort life tables, which know nothing about who left the country or arrived in it — so for a name that mostly came to America rather than being born in it, this is a floor rather than a figure. Where you fall among living Americans.
Where the name comes from
Origin Hebrew
From Hebrew עֵלִי (“ascent”); cognate to the Arabic-derived Ali.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Elis
- Eli Wallach (1915–2014)American actor
- Eli Whitney (1765–1825)American inventor
- Eli Cohen (1924–1965)Israeli spy
- Eli Roth (born 1972)American filmmaker and actor
- Eli Heckscher (1879–1952)Swedish historian and economist
- Eli Manning (born 1981)American football player
- Eli Junior Kroupi (born 2006)French footballer
- Eli Cohen (born 1972)Israeli politician, Minister of Energy of Israel
People named Eli with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Eli is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Eli is most concentrated in Alaska (1.9×), Nevada (1.8×), Utah (1.8×), Idaho (1.7×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 2012
The most popular boys’ names the year Eli peaked:
Eli elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| England and Wales boys | Eli | 8,499 | 105th |
| Norway girls | Eli | 7,256 | 30th |
| France boys | Eli +1 spelling | 2,605 | 349th |
| New Zealand boys | Eli | 1,523 | 31st |
| Belgium boys | Eli +1 spelling | 937 | 183rd |
| Ireland boys | Eli | 897 | 92nd |
| Northern Ireland boys | Eli | 537 | 64th |
| Scotland boys | Eli | 509 | 121st |
| Switzerland boys | Eli +1 spelling | 384 | 266th |
| England and Wales girls | Eli | 141 | 2,499th |
| France girls | Eli +1 spelling | 125 | 2,501st |
| Switzerland girls | Eli | 91 | 657th |
| Poland boys | Eli | 35 birth registrations | 402nd |
| Poland girls | Eli | 7 birth registrations | 624th |
| Belgium girls | Eli | 5 | 1,353rd |
Counts come from each country's own records and are not comparable with the US figures above, which cover different years and a different definition of a recorded name. Where a country writes the name several ways, the spellings are added together and the most common is shown. A row marked name registrations is counting something else: Portugal ranks each of a child's two given names separately, so a girl registered Maria Leonor is in both the Maria row and the Leonor row, and that figure is not a number of children.
Eli: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German boys | Switzerland | Eli | 232 | 0.019% | 282nd |
| German girls | Switzerland | Eli | 79 | 0.006% | 462nd |
| French boys | Switzerland | Eli | 133 | 0.031% | 175th |
| French boys | Switzerland | Éli | 11 | 0.003% | 604th |
| French girls | Switzerland | Eli | 11 | 0.003% | 445th |
| Italian boys | Switzerland | Eli | 7 | 0.011% | 115th |
| Italian girls | Switzerland | Eli | 1 | 0.002% | 194th |
| Romansh boys | Switzerland | Eli | 1 | 0.027% | 9th |
Parts of a country counted above, not extra births. The share is what makes the regions comparable: they differ in size by a factor of three hundred.
By canton, Eli is most concentrated in Bern, where 0.04% of children were given it – 78 of them.
Eli: rank by region
In 2025, Eli was given 5 times or more in 2 regions of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Eli | 205 | 29 |
| Wallonia | Eli | 235 | 12 |
In 2025, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Eli appears in the lists for Province of Antwerp (163rd), Province of East Flanders (179th) and Province of Flemish Brabant (218th).
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children – and published nothing after. So a region missing here is one where the name fell outside what was published, not one where it went unused. Places are shared where names tie, and the further down a list a place is, the more names can share it.
Eli by city
| City | Years | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin boys | 2017–2023 | 43 | 281st |
| Berlin girls | 2017–2023 | 2 | 538th |
One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.
Eli among the living
How many people each country's register counts under the name, rather than how many were given it in any one year. Each register was read on one date, and they are not the same date.
| Country | Spelling | First forename | Any forename |
|---|---|---|---|
| Finland boys | Eli | 65 | 119 |
| Finland girls | Eli | 26 | 32 |
A count of people on a register – Finland on 4 August 2026 – and not of births, so it cannot be compared with the figures above. Names with very few bearers are withheld, and a dash in the first-forename column means the register would not say rather than that nobody goes by it.
Where Eli lives in Spain
Not a count of births but of people: 179 women called Eli were living in Spain on 1 January 2025, of every age, born in any year. Where they live is not spread evenly.
Women: the provinces where it is densest
| Province | Spelling | People | Per thousand | Place there |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gipuzkoa | Eli | 16 | 0.043 | 1,352 |
| Burgos | Eli | 5 | 0.028 | 1,655 |
| Bizkaia | Eli | 11 | 0.018 | 2,186 |
| Navarra | Eli | 6 | 0.017 | 2,561 |
| Alicante/Alacant | Eli | 14 | 0.014 | 3,298 |
| Girona | Eli | 5 | 0.012 | 3,235 |
Listed in 11 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 41 it is either held by fewer than 5 people – the point below which the source withholds a name – or it fell past the 5,000 names the source will print for one province. Neither means nobody there is called it. The rate is the source's own, not a share worked out here.
Related names
Eli against another name
Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.
Try it on yourself
Source: US Social Security Administration, national and state baby-name files, 1880–2025. Counts include only births registered with the SSA, and names with fewer than five births in a year are not published. The living estimate applies SSA cohort life tables to those births; it counts people born in the United States, so it misses anyone who arrived later and anyone who has left.