Elias Family History

Spanish (Elías); French (also Élias); Greek Catalan Portuguese English Welsh German Dutch Breton Assyrian/Chaldean and Jewish; Hungarian (Éliás); Czech (Eliáš); Slovak (Eliáš and Eliaš): from a personal name taken from the New Testament Greek form (Ēlias) of Hebrew Eliyahu ‘Jehovah is God’ (Anglicized as Elijah in the Old Testament of the King James Bible).

This name was borne by a Biblical prophet, but its popularity among Christians in the Middle Ages was largely a result of its adoption by various early saints, including a 7th-century bishop of Syracuse and a 9th-century Spanish martyr.

In North America, this surname has absorbed cognates from other languages, e.g. Assyrian/Chaldean Eliya or Elia, Croatian and Slovenian Ilijaš or Iljaš.

In medieval England, the name generally took the form Ellis, but in the 18th and 19th centuries Welsh Nonconformists adopted the form Elias as a patronymic.