Elen
given name · Portuguese · Latin script
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Elen is a given name, most frequently recorded in the United Kingdom. In Armenia it is the 63rd most common given name. It appears chiefly in Portuguese and English, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: Welsh form of Helen. It is identical with the Welsh vocabulary word elen ‘nymph’, but this is unlikely to be the origin.
- SESweden1 in 338◐
- AMArmenia1 in 417
- NONorway1 in 464
carrying the name, one hue, darker where it is more common. Hover a country for its figure.
- ≈309K ●
- #591 ●
- 4 ●
- Sources
- 529 ●
- 1 in 338 ◐
across 10 countries
of 16M given names
recorded for this name
3.2M records
Official registry-verified
Sweden
Spellings & scripts●
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Ellen in US United States, GB United Kingdom, NL Netherlands and 20 more.
Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records; ○ marks a model's transliteration. Click a spelling to open its page.
Meaning & origin●
Welsh form of Helen. It is identical with the Welsh vocabulary word elen ‘nymph’, but this is unlikely to be the origin. It is found in Welsh texts from an early period as an equivalent of Helen, for example as the name of the mother of Constantine, finder of the True Cross. Variant: Elin.
Sources 1
- A concise dictionary of first names
Attested across 21 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world●
Sorted by bearers counted by national registers, records where none counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| GB United Kingdom | #174 | 198,335 | 182K rec. | — | 14 | Ellen | 233 |
| US United States | #182 | 172,846 | 2.5M rec. | 1 in 1.9K | 173K | Ellen | 529 |
| AU Australia | #233 | 97,413 | 87K rec. | — | 106 | Ellen | 213 |
| BR Brazil | #491 | 61,520△ | 16K rec. | 1 in 3.4K | 62K | Elen | 129 |
| CA Canada | #224 | 60,952 | 58K rec. | — | 7 | Ellen | 189 |
| DE Germany | #336 | 60,364 | 57K rec. | — | 1 | Ellen | 197 |
| PH Philippines | #449 | 48,452 | 46K rec. | — | — | Ellen | 126 |
| SE Sweden | #154 | 30,207△ | 10K rec. | 1 in 338 | 30K | Ellen | 109 |
| IT Italy | #398 | 17,718 | 18K rec. | — | 11 | Ellen | 70 |
| IE Ireland | #86 | 15,130 | 7.5K rec. | — | 67 | Ellen | 110 |
| FI Finland | — | 13,378△ | 1.6K rec. | 1 in 416 | 24K | Ellen | 48 |
| NO Norway | #106 | 11,778 | 6.3K rec. | 1 in 464 | 33K | Ellen | 94 |
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table. How that works.
Languages●
- Portuguese752K84%
- English72K8%
- Czech25K3%
- Spanish18K2%
- French5.4K1%
Show as table
| Name | Records | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Portuguese | 752,439 | 84% |
| English | 72,176 | 8% |
| Czech | 24,733 | 3% |
| Spanish | 18,446 | 2% |
| French | 5,421 | 1% |
Language is read off each record's context, not declared by the bearer; a share is of all records for this spelling.
Other recorded senses●
Elen is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In Romanian, < gr."EAsvog 1. Elenescu si Elinescu, act. 2. Ilinu, Banta, munt. (BCI VIII 35 si XII 114) ; fam. (Drag 159) sau < Elena ; cu afer. : Linu : v. si Elena I 6.
as a nameDictionar Onomastic Rominesc
In French, Variante d’Hélène, du grec helēnē « éclat ».
as a nameDictionnaire généalogique des prénoms
Welsh: probably a Welsh form of HELEN . It is identical with the vocabulary word elen nymph, but was used in Welsh texts from an early period as the name of the mother of Constantine, finder of the True Cross. Variant: Elin .
as a word
In Welsh, first/third-person plural conditional colloquial of mynd
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In German, moose, Eurasian elk (Alces alces)
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Ordered by how much of this spelling's record each language holds, so a sense from a language the name is barely used in sits last rather than first.
Over time●
Show as table
| Year | records |
|---|---|
| 1911 | 7 |
| 1913 | 7 |
| 1914 | 8 |
| 1915 | 5 |
| 1916 | 5 |
| 1917 | 6 |
| 1918 | 10 |
| 1920 | 6 |
| 1921 | 8 |
| 1923 | 6 |
| 1924 | 7 |
| 1926 | 5 |
| 1928 | 5 |
| 1932 | 5 |
| 1933 | 6 |
| 1947 | 5 |
| 1948 | 6 |
| 1954 | 5 |
| 1957 | 9 |
| 1962 | 5 |
| 1976 | 5 |
| 1981 | 6 |
| 1983 | 7 |
| 1984 | 6 |
| 1985 | 6 |
| 1987 | 6 |
| 1991 | 5 |
| 1994 | 5 |
| 1995 | 8 |
| 1996 | 7 |
| 1997 | 5 |
| 2001 | 10 |
| 2002 | 9 |
| 2003 | 7 |
| 2004 | 10 |
| 2005 | 7 |
| 2006 | 9 |
| 2008 | 13 |
| 2009 | 8 |
| 2010 | 12 |
| 2011 | 8 |
| 2012 | 13 |
| 2013 | 10 |
| 2015 | 7 |
| 2016 | 7 |
| 2017 | 5 |
| 2018 | 9 |
| 2019 | 12 |
| 2020 | 7 |
| 2021 | 5 |
| 2022 | 17 |
| 2023 | 13 |
| 2024 | 11 |
| 2025 | 8 |
US SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) — 54 years between 1911–2025. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.
Notable people with this name●
- Elen Luyddogb. 340GBlegendary wife of Macsen Wledig (Magnus Maximus) who brought the ideas of Martin of Tours to Wales
- Elen ferch Llywelynb. 1218Welsh royalty
- Elen Christensenb. 1904NONorwegian sculptor
- Elen Dosiab. 1915FRsinger
- Elen Willardb. 1941USAmerican former actress
- Elen Bunatyantsb. 1970RUOlympic basketball player
- Elen Lotmanb. 1981EEEstonian film maker (born 1981)
- Elen Rhysb. 1983GBactress
- Elen Evansb. 1985GBAmerican-football player (1985-)
- Elen Levonb. 1994AUAustralian singer
The ten people covered by the most Wikipedia language editions — a proxy for cross-cultural notability, which favours historical and Western figures over equally prominent contemporary ones — shown by birth year. Source: Wikidata (CC0).
Evidence●
Attested in 72 sources across 36 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Nomes (census name API) | — | 60K | #678 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror) | 2022 | 52K | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 52K | #550 |
| CZ Czechia | MVČR — living population register 2017 | — | 5.7K | #247 |
| CZ Czechia | naše jména — 2016 MVČR snapshot | — | 2.9K | #273 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | 2020 | 1.8K | — |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 1.3K | #10,174 |
| NO Norway | SSB — Navnesøk (name-search service, living population) | — | 1.3K | #1,432 |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024) | 2024 | 615 | #2,602 |
| BE Belgium | Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register) | 2008 | 543 | #2,745 |
| BE Belgium | Statbel — Noms de famille (family names) | — | 522 | #2,899 |
| NO Norway | SSB PxWebApi — Persons/Last names by year (StatBank tables 10501/12891) | 2025 | 441 | — |
Reference works 4
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.
Register rows as of the 2026-09-12 data build · 617 rows in the corpus for this spelling.
Frequently asked questions
- How common is the name Elen?
- We estimate roughly 309 thousand people bear Elen (counting its spellings and scripts) across 10 countries in our records.
- In which country does Elen have the most bearers?
- Elen is most frequently recorded in the United Kingdom, where it is most often spelled ellen.
- Where is Elen most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Elen is densest in Sweden — about 1 in 338 people — even though United Kingdom holds more of our records for it.
- How common is Elen compared with other names?
- In the United Kingdom, Elen is the 174th most common given name of 369,273 given names recorded there.
- Is Elen a male or female name?
- Elen is a female name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
- What does the name Elen mean?
- Recorded meaning: Welsh form of Helen. It is identical with the Welsh vocabulary word elen ‘nymph’, but this is unlikely to be the origin.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/elenThe same payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. Rate-limited for casual use. Bulk access and licensing.
About this data
Data snapshot . Figures are rebuilt periodically and will change.
Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.
Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.
Cite this page Mondonomo, “Elen” — the 174th most common given name in United Kingdom. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.