Ilya

Popularity, 1880–2025

girls named Ilya boys named Ilya

Girls and boys called Ilya

years more girls than boys years more boys than girls

Both, throughout, without either side ever taking it over: 256 girls and 970 boys in all, and in 2025 the split was 26 to 38.

The girls’ share of each year’s babies of the name, in the 23 years in which at least 25 babies got it. The line touches the middle more often than there are crossings marked: a year or two on the other side is not a name changing hands, and only a move that holds for 5 counted years and reaches 60/40 is recorded as one. All 581 names that changed sex.

By the numbers

Total US births

1,226

Estimated living today

1,200

Median age today

11

Peak year

2018

Best rank

2,617th

Rank in 2025

3,128th

First recorded

1961

Girls / boys

256 / 970

How old the living Ilyas are

born that year still alive today

Of the 1,226 babies given the name since 1961, about 1,200 are alive — 99 in every hundred. Roughly 840 of them are children and 0 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 2014 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 Russian

From Russian Илья́.

Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Notable Ilyas

• Ilya Repin (1844–1930)Russian-empire painter of Ukrainian birth
• Ilya Prigogine (1917–2003)Russian-Belgian physical chemist
• Ilya Frank (1908–1990)Soviet physicist
• Ilya Ehrenburg (1891–1967)Soviet writer, Bolshevik revolutionary, journalist and historian
• Ilya Ilf (1897–1937)Soviet writer and journalist
• Ilya Kutepov (born 1993)Russian footballer
• Ilya Yashin (born 1983)Russian activist and liberal politician
• Ilya Glazunov (1930–2017)Russian artist

People named Ilya with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).

Where Ilya is most common

• CA134
• NY37
• WA35
• FL16
• TX10

Relative to how many babies each state records, Ilya is most concentrated in Washington (9.3×), California (5.7×), New York (2.0×).

Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.

Names of 2018

The most popular boys’ names the year Ilya peaked:

• Liam
• Noah
• William
• James
• Oliver
• Benjamin

All the names of 2018

Ilya elsewhere

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.

Ilya: births by region

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.

Ilya: rank by region

In 2024, Ilya was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.

In 2024, Ilya was given 2 times or more in 2 regions of Poland.

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.

Ilya by city

One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.

Ilya 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.

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 Ilya lives in Spain

Not a count of births but of people: 496 men called Ilya were living in Spain on 1 January 2025, of every age, born in any year. Where they live is not spread evenly.

Men: the provinces where it is densest

Listed in 16 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 36 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

• Ilyas
• Ilyana
• Ily
• Ilyssa

Ilya against another name

Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.

• Ilya vs Ilyas
• Ilya vs Ilyana
• Ilya vs Ily
• Ilya vs Ilyssa

Compare Ilya with a name of your own