Boy Names baby nameElijah

What does the name Elijah mean?

The meaning of the name “Elijah” is: “The Lord is My God”.

Additional information: Elijah is a Latin masculine name, which in turn derived from the Hebrew name Eliyahu. Eliyahu meant “Yahweh is my God”, giving Elijah the anglicised meaning “The Lord is my God”. Elijah was a Hebrew prophet who appeared mysteriously during the 9th century B.C. and left this earth in a blazing chariot ascending into the heavens. He appears in the Bible in 1 and 2 Kings, and is seen with Moses during the Transfiguration of Jesus. A fashionable biblical choice, other biblical names that can be used in place of Elijah are Noah, Isaac, and Joshua. Because of its roots in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, there are a number of foreign variants for Elijah, including Ilyas (Arabic), Élie (French), Elias (German), and Elia (Italian). The feminine variants of the name Elijah are taken from the Latin Elias – examples such as Iliana, Ileana, and Eliana are more typically used in Eastern European countries, while Éliane is a French feminine variant for Elias. Elijah is commonly misspelled as ‘Eligah’, ‘Elijiah’, and ‘Elija’.

While Elijah was a reasonably common name in the Middle Ages, what with the name being used by saints and figures in medieval stories, it had declined in popularity by the late nineteenth century, struggling to reach the top hundred names for boys in the USA. It wasn’t until 1995 that the name finally breached the top hundred, and since then its popularity has increased substantially – Elijah was the eleventh most popular name for boys in 2013 and 2014. In the US, Elijah reached it's highest rank of popularity in 2006 in Hawaii at #5. A similar increase in popularity is noticeable in England and Wales, where the name climbed from 312th in 1996 to 69th in 2013.

Perhaps the most well known celebrity with the name Elijah, whose height of fame coincided with Elijah’s spike in popularity during the early 21st century, is Elijah Wood, best known for his work in The Lord of the Rings. Other famous people named Elijah are Elijah Kelley (American actor), Elijah Blue Allman (musician and son of Cher), and Elijah McCoy (Canadian-American inventor).