Meaning and history
From an Old French form of Helen, Elaine appears in Arthurian legend as the daughter of Pelles, the lover of Lancelot, and the mother of Galahad in Thomas Malory’s 15th-century Le Morte d’Arthur. The name was not widely used as an English given name until after Alfred Tennyson’s Arthurian epic Idylls of the King was published in 1859.
20062006: 393 births, rank #718
2007: 406 births, rank #720
2008: 399 births, rank #742
2009: 371 births, rank #766
2010: 343 births, rank #797
20112011: 399 births, rank #699
2012: 400 births, rank #702
2013: 360 births, rank #752
2014: 439 births, rank #650
2015: 423 births, rank #674
20162016: 498 births, rank #604
2017: 507 births, rank #590
2018: 470 births, rank #636
2019: 545 births, rank #563
2020: 583 births, rank #519
20212021: 647 births, rank #486
2022: 685 births, rank #463
2023: 808 births, rank #381
2024: 849 births, rank #368
20252025: 1,007 births, rank #304
Elaine rose from #368 to #305 for girls between 2024 and 2025. Its highest annual birth count came in 1947, with 7,059 births.