As a Greek variant of the Hebrew name Elijah, Elias means ‘My God is Yahweh’. Elias is a well known and popular name in many European languages.
Elias is a first name typically given to boys, but in rare cases also used as a girls name.
The first name Elias is one of the top 100 most popular boys names in the US – currently at #75 in our SmartGenius ranking. Over 1,000 babies each year are named Elias, accounting for approximately 0.30 % of all newborn boys. In the entire USA, approximately 100,372 people – children, adults and seniors – currently bear the name Elias. That is 0.03 % of all living Americans.
As a Greek variant of the Hebrew name Elijah, Elias means ‘My God is Yahweh’. Elias is a well known and popular name in many European languages.
The origins of... the worship of Yahweh reach at least to the Late Bronze Age (3300 - 1200 BC) if not somewhat earlier. The early Israelites were polytheistic and had a variety of Canaanite gods and goddesses.
Elias Koteas (*1961)
The Greek-Canadian actor is a graduate of the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York City. He often stars in supporting roles in films and tv series such as Ararat (2002), Zodiac (2007), Shutter Island (2010), House, M.D. (2006), and as Alvin Olinsky in the Chicago franchise.
Elias Corey (*1928)
The American organic chemist won the Nobel Prize in chemistry in 1990 and the Priestley Medal, American Chemical Societys greatest honor, in 2004. The studies of the Harvard professor emeritus had a major impact on biochemistry and modern medical science.
Elias Loomis (1811 - 1889)
The American mathematician was a professor at Western Reserve College, New York University and Yale University. He established the Loomis Observatory in 1858, the second oldest of its kind in the United States. His books on mathematics have been translated into several languages.
Elias Motsoaledi (1924 - 1994)
He was a South African anti-apartheid activist and companion of Nelson Mandela. Motsoaledi fought the government as a member of Umkhonto we Siezwe and was sentenced to life in 1963. He died one day before Mandela was elected President of South Africa.
When you hear the name Elias, you might first think of people. But did you know that there are also places with the name Elias? Are you also called Elias? Maybe one day you will visit the places that are named just like you...
there is a small town in the Huila Department called Elias. It is also known as La Mesa de Elias.
then the Saint Elias Lake is worth a trip. The area around the lake in Yukon, Canada is very popular among hikers.
If we dig really deep into our statistics, we find that there are very few boys' names that have been consistently popular for so long that they have been given to newborns in every single year since the beginning of our records in 1880. In fact, there are only 442 boys' names that appear in our statistics in every single year, and Elias is one of those very special classics. At the same time, Elias has never been more popular than it is in this century - in 2022 the name even made it to rank #43 of the most popular boys' names, easily landing in the top 100 of our SmartGenius first name statistics.
In years where the graph has no value, the name Elias was given less than five times or even none at all in the entire USA.
...because: In 2022, 6,697 boys were born and given the name Elias by their parents. That puts Elias at #43 on our list of most popular boys' names. It was much less popular in 1957 - only 143 parents chose this name for their newborn son and it ranked 585 on the popularity scale of all boys' names.
The name Elias may not be in the top rankings of the most popular boys’ names, but it is one of the few male given names, along with only 385 others, that can be found in every single state in the U.S. from Alaska to Florida and from California to New York. Of course, the name occurs more frequently in some states than in others – and Elias is apparently especially popular in New Mexico. Although the name is not one of the top 100 most popular men’s names here either, one in 523 men in New Mexico is called Elias. In total, that’s 1,771 people who feel addressed when the name Elias is shouted loudly across New Mexico and who ensure that their name makes it to #136 in our SmartGenius ranking of the most common male names in this nice state. If you asked all people in the entire U.S. for their first name, you would hear Elias as the answer a total of 100,372 times. This places Elias at #284 in our SmartGenius statistics for the most popular male names in the whole of the USA. This is true for all currently living people across all states and age groups – the recent popularity of the name Elias as a baby name is, of course, a bit different, as you can see from the statistics above.
Well, you might say, you probably figured that out yourself! But what you might not know is: The letter E is neither particularly common nor particularly rare as a first letter for boys' names: 3.8% of all common boys' names in the US begin with this letter. The most common first letters of boys' names, by the way, are J, A and D, while X, U and Q are the least common initials of boys' names.
With five letters, the name Elias is comparatively short. In fact, 17.0% of all common first names in the US consist of exactly five letters. Only 7% of all first names are even shorter, while 75% have more than five letters. On average, first names in the US (not counting hyphenated names) are 6.5 letters long. There are no significant differences between boys' and girls' names.
That means that with 3.8%, E as the first letter in boys' names is almost as common as all 26 letters on average - and of all the boys' names that start with an E, Edward is the most common.
If your name is Elias and someone asks after your name, you can of course just tell them what it is. But sometimes that isn't so easy - what if it's too loud, and you don't understand them well? Or what if the other person is so far away that you can see them but not hear them? In these situations, you can communicate your name in so many other ways: you call spell it, sign it, or even use a flag to wave it...
So that everyone really understands you when you have to spell the name Elias, you can simply say:
Elephant
Lion
Igloo
Apple
Sun
Braille is made up of dots, which the blind and visually impaired can feel to read words.
Elias
Elias
Just use American Sign Language!
These flags are used for maritime communication - each flag represents a letter.
E
L
I
A
S
In the navy, sailors of two ships might wave flags to each other to send messages. A sailor holds two flags in specific positions to represent different letters.
E
L
I
A
S
In Morse code, letters and other characters are represented only by a series of short and long tones. For example, a short tone followed by a long tone stands for the letter A. Elias sounds like this:
