Elijah

The prophet Elijah left this world in a whirlwind, riding a chariot of fire into the heavens — the most cinematic exit in the Hebrew Bible, and an image that has hung around the name ever since. Elijah comes from the Hebrew Eliyahu, meaning my God is Yahweh, and the prophet himself was a ninth-century B.C. figure who confronted King Ahab and the priests of Baal in one of the most famous showdowns in scripture. Elijah was a steady but unflashy American name through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, a Quaker and Puritan favorite, and then went very quiet for most of the twentieth — a great-grandfather name, slightly heavy, slightly old-country.

It re-entered the SSA top 100 in 1995 and climbed steadily, reaching the top ten by the late 2010s and currently sitting at number eight. Famous Elijahs include Elijah Wood, who as Frodo Baggins gave a generation of parents the name's modern face; Elijah McCoy, the nineteenth-century Black inventor whose name became American slang for the genuine article ("the real McCoy"); and the rapper Elijah Blake.

Three syllables in the standard American pronunciation — E-LI-jah — with the stress on the central syllable and a soft j at the end. The name pairs unusually well with other biblical or Old-World names (Elijah and Asher, Elijah and Ezra, Elijah and Naomi, Elijah and Mae) and reads as both reverent and contemporary. Nicknames are limited but useful: Eli for almost everyone, Lijah for the regional. Tall, deep-rooted, faintly prophetic, with the gravity of a name that has been around since long before America was named.