Eli
122,713 people in America carry this name — ranked #461 of 923.
A name with a settled sense and a settled sound.
Say it EE ly
2 syllables · the capitals are the stressed part
Phonetic transcription
IY1 L AY0 — ARPAbet, as published in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. The digit on a vowel marks its stress.
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People counted 122,713 2020 Census
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Rank #461 Common
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As a surname 1,683 ranked #16,559 the other way round
Where Eli comes from and what it means
Hebrew in origin, reading literally as “the offering or lifting up”.
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.
Eli name popularity by year
133,036 babies were given this name since 1880. The busiest year was 2012, with 8,101 of them.
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 Eli
Two syllables sit with almost anything — the join matters more than the length.
Better avoided
- Eli Eric — same opening
- Eli Edward — same opening
- Eli Ethan — same opening
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
Eli is given more often now than it was a generation ago. Most names move the other way.
Boys or girls: who is called Eli?
As recorded on census returns, not as anyone thinks the name ought to be used.
Where in America Eli is thickest on the ground
In Idaho the name is given 1.7 times as often as it is across the country.
- Idaho ×1.7
- North Dakota ×1.5
- Utah ×1.5
- Montana ×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.
How to spell Eli
Eli is how 87% of them spell it — 141,143 people answer to the sound.
- Eli 87%
- Elia 13%
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.
Who has this name today
- White alone (non-Hispanic) — 66.5%
- Black or African American alone (non-Hispanic) — 5.5%
- Hispanic or Latino origin — 19.4%
- Two or more races — 5.4%
- Asian and Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander alone — 2.3%
- American Indian and Alaska Native alone — 1.0%
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.
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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 Hebrew origin