Elif
Elif reached its high-water mark in 2024 at number 1,753, and has been recorded 1,534 times in all. In 2025 it ranked 1,911th. About 1,500 Elifs are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 9.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Elif
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 1,534
- Estimated living today
- 1,500
- Median age today
- 9
- Peak year
- 2024
- Best rank
- 1,753rd
- Rank in 2025
- 1,911th
- First recorded
- 1977
How old the living Elifs are
born that year still alive today
Of the 1,534 babies given the name since 1977, about 1,500 are alive — 99 in every hundred. Roughly 1,200 of them are children and 0 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 2016 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.
Notable Elifs
- Elif Şafak (born 1971)Turkish writer
- Elif Batuman (born 1977)American writer and academic
- Elif Jale Yeşilırmak (born 1986)Turkish wrestler
People named Elif with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Elif is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Elif is most concentrated in New Jersey (5.5×), New York (4.2×), Florida (3.2×), California (1.6×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 2024
The most popular girls’ names the year Elif peaked:
Elif elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| France girls | Elif +1 spelling | 5,275 | 215th |
| Belgium girls | Elif | 1,642 | 82nd |
| England and Wales girls | Elif | 1,321 | 517th |
| Switzerland girls | Elif | 718 | 107th |
| Italy girls | Elif | 294 | — |
| Austria girls | Elif | 292 | 51st |
| Poland girls | Elif +1 spelling | 88 birth registrations | 343rd |
| Scotland girls | Elif | 26 | 485th |
| Norway girls | Elif | 21 | 364th |
| Ireland girls | Elif | 16 | 727th |
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.
Elif: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German girls | Switzerland | Elif | 628 | 0.050% | 88th |
| French girls | Switzerland | Elif | 79 | 0.018% | 218th |
| Italian girls | Switzerland | Elif | 11 | 0.017% | 123rd |
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, Elif is most concentrated in Basel-Stadt, where 0.09% of children were given it – 34 of them.
Elif: rank by region
In 2025, Elif was given 5 times or more in 3 regions of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Elif | 158 | 35 |
| Wallonia | Elif | 399 | 6 |
| Brussels | Elif | 107 | 10 |
In 2024, Elif was given 2 times or more in 3 regions of Poland.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Dolnośląskie | Elif | 253 | 2 |
| Mazowieckie | Elif | 334 | 2 |
| Pomorskie | Elif | 221 | 2 |
In 2025, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Elif appears in the lists for Province of Limburg (34th), Brussels-Capital Region (107th), Province of Antwerp (136th) and Province of East Flanders (188th).
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children, Poland below 2 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.
Elif by city
| City | Years | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin girls | 2017–2023 | 357 | 56th |
One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.
Elif 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| the Netherlands girls | Elif | 2,185 | 2,632 |
| Finland girls | Elif | 115 | 179 |
A count of people on a register – the Netherlands on 1 January 2018, 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.
Related names
Elif 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.