Elena

114,540 people in America carry this name — ranked #491 of 923.

A name with a settled sense and a settled sound.

Say it EH luh nah

3 syllables · the capitals are the stressed part

Phonetic transcription

EH1 L AH0 N AA0 — ARPAbet, as published in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. The digit on a vowel marks its stress.

  • People counted 114,540 2020 Census
  • Rank #491 Common
  • Per 100,000 37.9 about 1 in 2,894 people
  • As a surname 607 ranked #39,170 the other way round

What Elena means and where it comes from

Greek in origin, reading literally as “light”.

Origins are a matter of scholarly argument rather than record, and a name can be traced more than one way. We state one reading and say where it came from.

Elena name popularity by year

85,756 babies were given this name since 1880. The busiest year was 2019, with 3,935 of them.

80 90 00 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 00 10s 20

Most people carrying it were born in the 2010s. It has been given more often of late.

Counted from Social Security card applications, so it covers births registered in the United States and leaves out names given to fewer than five babies in a year.

What goes well after Elena

Three syllables already, so a short middle name keeps the whole from running long.

Better avoided

  • Elena Ashley — runs together
  • Elena Amy — runs together
  • Elena Anna — runs together

Chosen by sound from the pronouncing dictionary, then ordered by how often the name is given. None of it is a rule — the ear decides.

On the way up

Elena is given more often now than it was a generation ago. Most names move the other way.

Boys or girls: who is called Elena?

0.1% men
114,377 women

As recorded on census returns, not as anyone thinks the name ought to be used.

Who carries it today

  • White alone (non-Hispanic) — 43.0%
  • Black or African American alone (non-Hispanic) — 1.6%
  • Hispanic or Latino origin — 47.5%
  • Two or more races — 2.5%
  • Asian and Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander alone — 5.0%

Categories are how people answered the census — a fact about the bearers, not a property of the name. Conclusions are ours, not the Census Bureau’s.

Where in America Elena is thickest on the ground

In New Mexico the name is given 2.1 times as often as it is across the country.

  • New Mexico ×2.1
  • Arizona ×1.8
  • Nevada ×1.7
  • California ×1.5
  • Alaska ×1.5

Measured against the state's own share of births since 1960, so a small state can lead a big one. Counted from Social Security card applications.

The same name abroad

  • Leno Esth
  • Lena Alb.|Lett
  • Jela Serv
  • Nelly English
  • Ljena Alb
  • Lenka Slov
  • Lenia Alb
  • Ilona Hungarian
  • Helen Scottish
  • Ellin Welsh
  • Ellen English
  • Elene
  • Leonor Spanish
  • Lenore German

Forms of one name traced to the same root. Spellings are as the glossary printed them, so some look older than the versions in use today.

How to spell Elena

Elena is how 49% of them spell it — 234,611 people answer to the sound.

Each spelling is its own census entry — the counts never overlap, so the shares are of the group, not of the country.

Names about as common

The nearest entries above and below by number of people.

Full names people carry

The census counts first names and surnames separately and never together, so these are estimates: how often the two halves would meet if they paired at random. They do not — names cluster by community — so read them as an order of magnitude, not a headcount.

Try it Name Matcher

Enter a surname and hear which first names sit well with it.

The matcher is confident about clashes — rhymes, doubled sounds, colliding stresses — because those are facts about the phonemes. Ordering the names that pass is a set of rules, not a verdict on beauty.

Open Name Matcher on its own page

Where this page gets its numbers

  • Counts, ranks and shares: U.S. Census Bureau, 2020 Census tabulations of first and last names occurring 100 or more times. Percentages, bands and groupings are our own arithmetic — the conclusions are ours, not the Bureau’s.
  • Pronunciation, syllables and rhyme groups: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, Carnegie Mellon University. The plain-English respelling is ours.
  • Origins and the forms a name takes in other languages: Charlotte Yonge, History of Christian Names, 1884 — a public-domain work. Scholarship has moved on since, so read it as one reading of a name, not the last word.

Below a hundred people we publish no figure at all — the same threshold the Census Bureau applies to us. What each source covers
Other names of Greek origin