Ilya
given name · Russian · Latin script
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Ilya is a given name, most frequently recorded in Russia, where it is the 50th most common given name. It appears chiefly in Russian and English, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: From Greek Elias, the name used in the New Testament for the prophet Elijah ‘Yahweh is God’.
- 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 ●
- #165 ●
- 9 ●
- Sources
- 399 ●
- 1 in 188 ◐
across 12 countries
of 16M given names
recorded for this name
5.8M records
Official registry-verified
Finland
Spellings & scripts●
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●
From Greek Elias, the name used in the New Testament for the prophet Elijah ‘Yahweh is God’.
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 | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| RU Russia | #50 | 4,942,974 | 1.9M rec. | — | #26 | Илья | 220 |
| AR Argentina | #189 | 843,955 | 426K rec. | — | 10K | Elias | 123 |
| TR Türkiye | #145 | 593,153 | 508K rec. | — | — | Ilyas | 59 |
| UA Ukraine | #81 | 565,656 | 557K rec. | — | listed | Ілля | 75 |
| MX Mexico | #218 | 226,881 | 255K rec. | — | 658 | Elias | 211 |
| IN India | — | 216,490 | 111K rec. | — | 3.3K | Iliyas | 104 |
| PE Peru | #153 | 208,437 | 214K rec. | — | #10 | Elias | 93 |
| BR Brazil | #149 | 190,432 | 279K rec. | 1 in 1.1K | 191K | Elias | 214 |
| VE Venezuela | #147 | 173,790 | 92K rec. | — | — | Elias | 94 |
| CL Chile | #186 | 87,773 | 7.6K rec. | — | 284 | Elias | 101 |
| US United States | #664 | 87,649 | 620K rec. | 1 in 3.8K | 88K | Elias | 399 |
| AT Austria | #46 | 61,752 | 4.3K rec. | — | 17K | Elias | 100 |
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table. How that works.
Languages●
- Russian53K38%
- English27K20%
- Polish13K10%
- Spanish5K4%
- German4K3%
Show as table
| Name | Records | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Russian | 52,524 | 38% |
| English | 27,495 | 20% |
| Polish | 13,076 | 10% |
| Spanish | 4,960 | 4% |
| German | 3,976 | 3% |
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●
Ilya is also recorded in 4 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In English, Russian form of Elijah; the Lord is God
as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…
a mythical tree of paradise
as a nameThe Penguin book of Hindu names for boys
In zku, snake, in particular the red-bellied black snake
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Russian form of Elias (see ELLIS ).
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 |
|---|---|
| 1961 | 5 |
| 1966 | 5 |
| 1969 | 11 |
| 1971 | 7 |
| 1974 | 7 |
| 1976 | 6 |
| 1980 | 7 |
| 1981 | 5 |
| 1988 | 6 |
| 1991 | 7 |
| 1992 | 6 |
| 1993 | 14 |
| 1994 | 11 |
| 1995 | 8 |
| 1996 | 13 |
| 1997 | 14 |
| 1998 | 14 |
| 1999 | 22 |
| 2000 | 24 |
| 2001 | 21 |
| 2002 | 14 |
| 2003 | 32 |
| 2004 | 19 |
| 2005 | 31 |
| 2006 | 26 |
| 2007 | 30 |
| 2008 | 22 |
| 2009 | 28 |
| 2010 | 32 |
| 2011 | 42 |
| 2012 | 40 |
| 2013 | 34 |
| 2014 | 31 |
| 2015 | 36 |
| 2016 | 27 |
| 2017 | 32 |
| 2018 | 48 |
| 2019 | 38 |
| 2020 | 38 |
| 2021 | 38 |
| 2022 | 27 |
| 2023 | 34 |
| 2024 | 32 |
| 2025 | 38 |
US SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) — 44 years between 1961–2025. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.
Notable people with this name●
- Ilya Ulyanovb. 1831RURussian teacher, father of Vladimir Lenin (1831-1886)
- Ilia Repinb. 1844UAnot in their usual nameRussian-empire painter of Ukrainian birth (1844-1930)
- Élie Metchnikoffb. 1845FRnot in their usual nameRussian-French immunologist, embryologist, biologist
- Ilya Ehrenburgb. 1891UASoviet writer, Bolshevik revolutionary, journalist and historian (1891–1967)
- Ilya Frankb. 1908RUSoviet physicist
- Ilya Prigogineb. 1917BERussian-Belgian physical chemist (1917–2003)
- Ilya Piatetski-Shapirob. 1929RURussian mathematician (1929–2009)
- Ilya Oleynikovb. 1947RUSoviet and Russian comic actor and television personality (1947-2012)
- Elya Baskinb. 1950USnot in their usual nameRussian actor
- Ilya Ponomarevb. 1975RURussian-Ukrainian politician and entrepreneur
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 52 sources across 29 countries.
Reference works 4
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- 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 · 327 rows in the corpus for this spelling.
Frequently asked questions
- How common is the name Ilya?
- We estimate roughly 461 thousand people bear Ilya (counting its spellings and scripts) across 12 countries in our records.
- In which country does Ilya have the most bearers?
- Ilya is most frequently recorded in Russia, where it is most often spelled илья.
- Where is Ilya most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Ilya is densest in Finland — about 1 in 188 people — even though Russia holds more of our records for it.
- How common is Ilya compared with other names?
- In Russia, Ilya is the 50th most common given name of 418,751 given names recorded there.
- Is Ilya a male or female name?
- Ilya 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 Ilya mean?
- Recorded meaning: From Greek Elias, the name used in the New Testament for the prophet Elijah ‘Yahweh is God’.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/ilyaThe 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, “Ilya” — the 50th most common given name in Russia. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.