Elke
given name · German · Latin script
Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Elke is a given name, most frequently recorded in Germany. It appears chiefly in German and English, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: apparently a nickname from the elk (ME elk); first attested William le Elk 1279 RH (C).
- DEGermany1 in 534◐
- ATAustria1 in 2K
- BEBelgium1 in 2.5K
carrying the name, one hue, darker where it is more common. Hover a country for its figure.
- ≈8.2K ●
- 3 ●
- Sources
- 246 ●
- 1 in 6.8K ◐
across 10 countries
recorded for this name
273K records
Official registry-verified
Netherlands
Spellings & scripts●
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●
apparently a nickname from the elk (ME elk); first attested William le Elk 1279 RH (C).
Sources 1
- A Dictionary of English Surnames
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 | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| DE Germany | #111 | 227,187 | 214K rec. | — | — | Elke | 214 |
| AT Austria | #298 | 8,098 | 3.7K rec. | — | 810 | Elke | 100 |
| BE Belgium | #296 | 6,090 | 4.2K rec. | — | 10 | Elke | 86 |
| AU Australia | — | 3,693 | 3.2K rec. | — | 7 | Elke | 117 |
| US United States | — | 3,164 | 34K rec. | 1 in 105K | 3.2K | Elke | 246 |
| NL Netherlands | — | 2,549 | 1.9K rec. | 1 in 6.8K | 2.5K | Elke | 63 |
| GB United Kingdom | — | 2,340 | 2.1K rec. | — | listed | Elke | 67 |
| BR Brazil | — | 1,419△ | 6 rec. | 1 in 149K | 1.4K | Elke | 3 |
| CA Canada | — | 1,149 | 1.2K rec. | — | 1 | Elke | 57 |
| CH Switzerland | — | 543 | 388 rec. | — | 4 | Elke | 51 |
| SE Sweden | — | 369△ | 133 rec. | 1 in 28K | 369 | Elke | 35 |
| NO Norway | — | 290 | 128 rec. | — | 266 | Elke | 21 |
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table. How that works.
Languages●
- German251K73%
- English36K10%
- Portuguese21K6%
- Dutch7.4K2%
- Spanish6.3K2%
Show as table
| Name | Records | Note |
|---|---|---|
| German | 250,723 | 73% |
| English | 35,926 | 10% |
| Portuguese | 21,081 | 6% |
| Dutch | 7,432 | 2% |
| Spanish | 6,325 | 2% |
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●
Elke 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.
North German: reduced pet form of ADELHEID.
as a nameA concise dictionary of first names
In German, a diminutive of the female given name Adelheid, from Low German or West Frisian, popular in the mid-twentieth century
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In German, ) Elka: weibl. Vom., verselbststän digte niederdeutsch-friesische Koseform von
as a nameDUDEN Lexikon der Vornamen
In English, nickname from Middle English elk ‘elk’.
as a nameThe Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
1 Frisian and Dutch: pet form derived from a shortened version of ADELHEID . 2 Jewish: Yiddish name, apparently adopted as a feminine form of ELKAN . The variant Elkie is well known as the name of the singer Elkie Brooks. Top
as a word
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 |
|---|---|
| 1953 | 5 |
| 1957 | 6 |
| 1958 | 6 |
| 1960 | 9 |
| 1961 | 9 |
| 1962 | 6 |
| 1963 | 14 |
| 1964 | 33 |
| 1965 | 50 |
| 1966 | 52 |
| 1967 | 56 |
| 1968 | 77 |
| 1969 | 48 |
| 1970 | 55 |
| 1971 | 39 |
| 1972 | 50 |
| 1973 | 32 |
| 1974 | 23 |
| 1975 | 26 |
| 1976 | 26 |
| 1977 | 34 |
| 1978 | 27 |
| 1979 | 27 |
| 1980 | 23 |
| 1981 | 9 |
| 1982 | 18 |
| 1983 | 11 |
| 1984 | 13 |
| 1985 | 9 |
| 1987 | 9 |
| 1988 | 5 |
| 1989 | 15 |
| 1990 | 5 |
| 1991 | 9 |
| 1992 | 13 |
| 1993 | 7 |
| 1994 | 11 |
| 1996 | 6 |
| 1997 | 8 |
| 1999 | 14 |
| 2000 | 12 |
| 2001 | 6 |
| 2002 | 10 |
| 2003 | 11 |
| 2004 | 13 |
| 2005 | 11 |
| 2006 | 11 |
| 2007 | 8 |
| 2008 | 5 |
| 2009 | 11 |
| 2010 | 9 |
| 2011 | 6 |
| 2012 | 5 |
| 2013 | 8 |
| 2014 | 14 |
| 2015 | 9 |
| 2016 | 9 |
| 2017 | 9 |
| 2018 | 6 |
| 2019 | 7 |
| 2020 | 10 |
| 2021 | 9 |
| 2023 | 5 |
| 2024 | 8 |
| 2025 | 9 |
US SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) — 65 years between 1953–2025. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.
Notable people with this name●
- Elke Erbb. 1938DEGerman poet and translator (1938–2024)
- Elke Sommerb. 1940DEGerman actress (born 1940)
- Elke Neidhardtb. 1941DEactress, director (1941-2013)
- Elke Heidenreichb. 1943DEGerman author and journalist (born 1943)
- Elke Leonhardb. 1949DEGerman opinion journalist and politician
- Elke Aberleb. 1950DEGerman actress
- Elke Kahrb. 1961ATAustrian politician
- Elke Büdenbenderb. 1962DEGerman lawyer
- Elke Winkensb. 1970DEGerman actress
- Elke Schallb. 1973DEGerman table tennis player
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 64 sources across 33 countries.
Reference works 5
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- 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 · 397 rows in the corpus for this spelling.
Frequently asked questions
- How common is the name Elke?
- We estimate roughly 8.2 thousand people bear Elke (counting its spellings and scripts) across 10 countries in our records.
- In which country does Elke have the most bearers?
- Elke is most frequently recorded in Germany, where it is most often spelled elke.
- How common is Elke compared with other names?
- In Germany, Elke is the 111th most common given name of 154,506 given names recorded there.
- Is Elke a male or female name?
- Elke 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 Elke mean?
- Recorded meaning: apparently a nickname from the elk (ME elk); first attested William le Elk 1279 RH (C).
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/elkeThe 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, “Elke” — the 111th most common given name in Germany. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.