Ila
Meaning
earth (a Vedic goddess)
The story
Ila enters Sanskrit with more than one meaning: earth, speech, even the nourishing image of a cow. Later Hindu stories make the name more mobile still. In one family of tellings, Ila moves between male and female forms, becomes the partner of Budha, and gives birth to Pururavas, an ancestor claimed by a great royal line. The versions do not all agree, and older Vedic references cannot simply be folded into one tidy biography. That uncertainty is part of the story. Ila has lasted because the figure crosses boundaries that a short summary would rather keep fixed: land and language, parent and ruler, one gendered life and another. It would be careless to paste a modern identity label onto an ancient text. It would be equally careless to erase the transformations those texts preserve. Ila is a small name with room for a genuinely complicated inheritance.
Popularity, 1890–2024
Shape drawn from US Social Security baby-name records. Ila peaked in the 1900s and the 2020s in nearly equal measure.
See popularity in Brazil
Popularity in Brazil
1,387 people · the #6,625 first name in Brazil · about 1 in 142,857 · median age 45
Among people named Ila living in Brazil at the 2022 census, more were born in the 1960s than in any other decade.
The census also counted 30 born between 2020 and August 2022, too recent a span to chart.
Source: IBGE, Censo Demográfico 2022
When you meet Ila
People given the name Ila in the United States span the generations: the middle half were born anywhere from 1940 to 2025. Age is the one thing the name won't tell you.
Estimated from US Social Security birth registrations and typical lifespans; a rough guide, not a rule.
The Ila deep dive
Whether you’re naming a baby or exploring your own name’s history, this is a personal letter, not a list: where Ila truly comes from, how it traveled, and what a century of records reveals. If you have grown a tree on nametree, it also considers how Ila fits with your family’s names and surname.
Keep exploring
Does Ila fit YOUR family?
nametree reads your family’s names and finds the ones that belong. Free, private, no ads.
Add Ila to your family’s tree →