Elden
Masculine · “Ella's hill”
Elden is overwhelmingly a boys’ name — 5,921 boys against 11 girls since 1880.
Elden is an English place-and-family name, and it is one of the harder ones to pin down — several English places called Eldon and Elden have slightly different explanations, and the surname draws on all of them.
How old is the name Elden?
Elden first appears in US birth records in 1884 — 141 years ago. The typical Elden alive today was born around 1939, making them about 86 years old. About 2,400 people named Elden are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Elden most popular?
Elden peaked in 1934, reaching #496 nationally. Today it ranks #3240, 2,744 places below that high. See the whole 1934 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From Eldon to Elden
The story of Elden
Eldon in County Durham and Elden in Derbyshire both gave families their names, and English spelling of the period was loose enough that the two forms circulated together. The surname crossed to America and appeared as a given name from the late nineteenth century, reaching its widest use in the first half of the twentieth — a period when English surnames of this shape, Elden, Alden and Delbert, were widely given.
Meaningscholars disagree
Ella's hill
The most-cited reading takes an Old English personal name, Ella, with dun, a hill. Other readings give the first element as eld, old, or as a word for elder trees; the second element is sometimes denu, a valley, rather than dun. The elements are all genuine and the combination is not settled.
How the name formed
- Eldon
- Elden
Related forms: Eldon · Alden
Pronouncing Elden
EL-den
Two syllables, first stressed. There is no variation.
Nicknames for Elden
Moderate
What the data says
146 years of official birth records
The long climb, and where it stands now
The same years in position rather than babies
- First recorded
- 1884
- Most boys named
- 1925135 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #496reached in 1934
- Change vs 2022
- −16.3%36 in 2025, from 43
Rank is a position, a count is a headcount, and they move independently — a name can hold its rank while the number of babies behind it falls. Source: U.S. Social Security Administration.
Elden in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Eldon in English — spelling variant
- Alden in English — related form
Strongest US states over the last decade: California, Utah, Michigan.
Eldens among us
people named Elden are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 boy in 47,447 born in 2025 was named Elden
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Is it right for you
What happens to a name after it peaks
The Hilton test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Elden's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Hilton climbed just as high around 1905, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Hilton's path sketches the road Elden is walking now.
Elden sits in the calm middle of the cycle — neither chasing a wave nor sliding off one. Middle-of-the-cycle names age slowly and predictably.
A scored estimate from 146 years of naming cycles — not a prophecy. Great names outlive statistics. How this is scored
Where Elden is headed
Elden should hold steady through 2030 — the curve is flat, and flat curves are the most predictable kind.
Medium confidence — fitted on official counts through 2025.
A damped-trend projection of the official birth data — a sketch of momentum, not a promise. Every name's forecast, ranked.
Elden beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Elden in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US boys given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- Plain letters and an obvious pronunciation for any English speaker.
- Genuine early twentieth-century American history, so it is a revival rather than an invention.
- It fits the current group of -den names without being one of the crowded ones.
- Eldon and Alden are both close and both more written.
- The meaning is genuinely unsettled, so the honest answer names several readings.
- It reads as a name of a particular era to older Americans.
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Elden
Masculine · #3240 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Eldens are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 2,400 people named Elden are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Elden in 2025?
- Elden ranks #3240 among US boy names in 2025, with 36 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Elden?
- About 1 in every 47,447 US boys born in 2025 was named Elden — 36 in all.
- Will my child share the name Elden with classmates?
- Elden will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Elden
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Eugenio#3240 · Pace#3240 · Stoney#3240 · Dany#3240 · Rasheed#3240 · Abdirahman#3240 · Mykah#3240 · Lowell#3240
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Elden? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Elden and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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