Ilija

given name · Croatian · Latin script

Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

Ilija is a given name, most frequently recorded in Russia, where it is the 50th most common given name. It appears chiefly in Croatian and German, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: From Old Church Slavonic Илїа (Ilia), from Ancient Greek Ἠλίᾱς (Ēlíās), from Hebrew אֵלִיָּהוּ (eliyáhu, “Yahweh is god”).

rarermore common
  • FIFinland1 in 188◐
  • GEGeorgia1 in 204
  • RURussia1 in 209

carrying the name, one hue, darker where it is more common. Hover a country for its figure.

≈461K ●

across 12 countries

#165 ●

of 16M given names

9 ●

recorded for this name

Sources
399 ●

5.8M records

Official registry-verified

1 in 188 ◐

Finland

Spellings & scripts●

ИльяCyrillic · Russian●4.8M records
EliasLatin · Portuguese●3.2M records
איליהHebrew · Hebrew●64K records
ᲘლიაGeorgian · Georgian●49K records
ইলিয়াসBengali · Bangla●1.1K records
ΗλίαςGreek · Greek●735 records
อิลยัสThai · Thai●415 records
ኢሊያስEthiopic · Amharic●51 records
ԻլյաArmenian · Armenian●7 records

12 other spellings are counted as the same name:

Locally spelled Elias in BR Brazil, AR Argentina, US United States and 13 more, Илья in RU Russia, KZ Kazakhstan, FI Finland and 1 more, Ilyas in TR Türkiye and Ілля in UA Ukraine.

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●

Derivation of Ilija: each step is the form the one above it came from.
Ilija
  1. Old Church SlavonicИлїаIlia●
  2. Ancient GreekἨλίᾱςĒlíās●
  3. Hebrewאֵלִיָּהוּeliyáhu“Yahweh is god”●

From Old Church Slavonic Илїа (Ilia), from Ancient Greek Ἠλίᾱς (Ēlíās), from Hebrew אֵלִיָּהוּ (eliyáhu, “Yahweh is god”).

Sources 2

Attested across 18 languages in the etymology graph.

Where in the world●

Sorted by bearers counted by national registers, records where none counts.

Where Ilija is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
RU Russia#504,942,9741.9M rec.—#26Илья220
AR Argentina#189843,955426K rec.—10KElias123
TR Türkiye#145593,153508K rec.——Ilyas59
UA Ukraine#81565,656557K rec.—listedІлля75
MX Mexico#218226,881255K rec.—658Elias211
IN India—216,490111K rec.—3.3KIliyas104
PE Peru#153208,437214K rec.—#10Elias93
BR Brazil#149190,432279K rec.1 in 1.1K191KElias214
VE Venezuela#147173,79092K rec.——Elias94
CL Chile#18687,7737.6K rec.—284Elias101
US United States#66487,649620K rec.1 in 3.8K88KElias399
AT Austria#4661,7524.3K rec.—17KElias100

Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table. How that works.

Languages●

  • Croatian70K80%
  • German4.1K5%
  • English4K4%
  • Serbian2.2K3%
  • Hungarian1.3K1%
Show as table
Languages in which the name is recorded
NameRecordsNote
Croatian70,04180%
German4,0995%
English3,9544%
Serbian2,2083%
Hungarian1,2691%

Language is read off each record's context, not declared by the bearer; a share is of all records for this spelling.

Other names spelled this way◐

Ilija is also recorded as 3 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • French given name858 records spelled Ilija3 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, Serbia, United States, Belgium

    Also written Ilïja

  • Czech given name447 records spelled Ilija4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Czechia, Slovakia, Serbia, United States

    Languages: Czech, Slovak

    Also written Eliasz

  • a separate given name333 records spelled Ilija2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Serbia, United Kingdom, North Macedonia

    Also written Ilijâ

31 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Other recorded senses●

Ilija is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • In Latvian, Sievietes vārds

    as a wordTēzaurs.lv (Dictionary and Thesaurus of Latvian, AiLab / LU MII)

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●

01020301990200020102020

Show as table
Ilija in Statistik Austria — Vornamen der Geborenen (1984–present), Austria, 1986–2024
Yearrecords
19861
19881
19891
19912
19942
19952
19971
19981
19993
20002
20011
20025
20033
20045
20055
20066
20074
20084
20094
20108
201111
20127
201314
201411
201511
201616
201711
201811
201912
202011
202120
202219
202319
202425

AT Statistik Austria — Vornamen der Geborenen (1984–present) — 34 years between 1986–2024. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.

Notable people with this name●

18001850190019502000Ilija Garašanin, b. 1812Ilija Pantelić, b. 1942Ilija Petković, b. 1945Ilija Najdoski, b. 1964Ilija Trojanow, b. 1965Ilija Lupulesku, b. 1967Ilija Ivić, b. 1971Ilija Bozoljac, b. 1985Ilija Spasojević, b. 1987Ilija Nestorovski, b. 1990

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 48 sources across 26 countries.

Official registers attesting Ilija
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
HR CroatiaDZS — Imena i prezimena (per-token lookup form)20218.5K#123
HR CroatiaDZS — Učestalost osobnih imena (Popis 2021)20216.2K—
SI SloveniaSURS — resident population given names2008624#213
SI SloveniaSURS — resident population given names2009620#215
SI SloveniaSURS — resident population given names2010616#218
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex2020606#17,930
SI SloveniaSURS — resident population given names2011603#220
SI Sloveniastat.si Imena rojstva — full name register (per-token frequency + rank)—596#542
SI SloveniaSURS — resident population given names2012596#224
SI SloveniaSURS — resident population given names2025594#271
SI SloveniaSURS — resident population given names2023594#264
SI SloveniaSURS — resident population given names2021594#258

Reference works 2

  • 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 · 308 rows in the corpus for this spelling.

Frequently asked questions

How common is the name Ilija?
We estimate roughly 461 thousand people bear Ilija (counting its spellings and scripts) across 12 countries in our records.
In which country does Ilija have the most bearers?
Ilija is most frequently recorded in Russia, where it is most often spelled илья.
Where is Ilija most common?
Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Ilija is densest in Finland — about 1 in 188 people — even though Russia holds more of our records for it.
How common is Ilija compared with other names?
In Russia, Ilija is the 50th most common given name of 418,751 given names recorded there.
Is Ilija a male or female name?
Ilija is a male 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 Ilija mean?
Recorded meaning: From Old Church Slavonic Илїа (Ilia), from Ancient Greek Ἠλίᾱς (Ēlíās), from Hebrew אֵלִיָּהוּ (eliyáhu, “Yahweh is god”).
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/ilija

The 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

● measured from records◐ inferred from the name graph○ machine-generated

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, “Ilija” — the 50th most common given name in Russia. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.

See how Ilija parses inside a full name →