Ilya
Ilya, Iliya, Ilia, Ilja, Ilija, or Illia is the East Slavic form of the male Hebrew name Eliyahu, meaning "My God is Yahu/Jah." It comes from the Byzantine Greek pronunciation of the vocative of the Greek Elias. It is pronounced with stress on the second syllable. The diminutive form is Iliusha or Iliushen'ka. The Russian patronymic for a son of Ilya is "Ilyich", and a daughter is "Ilyinichna".
People with the name
Real people
- Ilya (Archbishop of Novgorod), 12th-century Russian Orthodox cleric and saint
- Ilya Ivanovitch Alekseyev, commander of the Russian Imperial Army
- Ilya Borok, Russian jiujitsu fighter
- Ilya Bryzgalov, Russian ice hockey goalie
- Ilya Dzhirkvelov, author and KGB defector
- Ilya Ehrenburg, Russian writer and Soviet cultural ambassador
- Ilya Frank, Russian physicist
- Ilya Glazunov, Russian painter
- Ilya Gringolts, violinist
- Ilya Grubert, violinist
- Ilya Ilf, Russian author of Twelve Chairs and the Golden Calf
- Ilya Ilyin, Kazakhstani Olympic weightlifter
- Ilya Ivashka, Belarusian tennis player
- Ilya Kabakov, Russian-American conceptual artist of Jewish origin
- Ilya Kaler, violinist
- Ilya Kaminsky, Ukrainian-American-Jewish poet
- Ilya Kharun, Canadian swimmer
- Ilya Kovalchuk, Russian ice hockey winger in the KHL, formerly for the Atlanta Thrashers, New Jersey Devils, L.A. Kings and Washington Capitals of the NHL
- Ilya Kulik Russian figure skater
- Ilya Kuvshinov, Russian animator
- Ilya Lagutenko, lead singer of the Russian rock band Mumiy Troll
- Ilya Lobanov, Kazakhstani ice hockey player
- Ilia Malinin, American figure skater, first person to land a quadruple axel
- Ilya Espino de Marotta, Marine engineer and leader of the Panama Canal Expansion Project
- Ilya Mechnikov, Russian Nobel Prize-winning microbiologist
- Ilya Oberyshyn, Ukrainian insurgent
- Ilya Osipov, nicknamed "m0NESY", Russian professional Counter-Strike 2 player for Team Falcons
- Ilya Petrov, Russian footballer
- Ilya Piatetski-Shapiro, Russian-Jewish-Israeli mathematician
- Ilya Prigogine, physical chemist and Nobel Prize-winning physicist
- Ilya Prusikin, Russian musician, singer, record producer, vlogger, video director and screenwriter
- Ilya Repin, Russian painter
- Ilya Salkind, movie producer
- Ilya Salmanzadeh, Persian-Swedish music producer
- Ilya Samsonov, a Russian goaltender for the Toronto Maple Leafs, formerly Washington Capitals
- Ilya Serov, Russian-American trumpeter and singer
- Ilya Sorokin, a Russian goaltender for the New York Islanders
- Ilya Strebulaev, Russian-American financial economist
- Ilya Sutskever, computer scientist, co-founder and former chief scientist of OpenAI
- Ilia Topuria, Spanish-Georgian mixed martial artist
- Ilya Tsipursky, Soviet judoka and sambist
- Ilya Ulyanov, father of Soviet revolutionary Vladimir Lenin
- Ilya Yashin, Russian political figure
- Ilya Zhitomirskiy, Russian-American founder of Diaspora
Religious figures
- Ilya Muromets, Orthodox monastic saint, Russian folk hero
- Elijah, a Hebrew prophet of the ninth century BCE, known in Russian as Iliya the Prophet
- Ali or Eli, a cousin and son-in-law of the Islamic prophet Muhammad, and the first Imam of shiahs.
Fictional characters
- Illya Kuryakin, a main character in the TV show The Man from U.N.C.L.E.
- Ilya Pasternak, fictional character from the video game Ace Combat 6: Fires of Liberation
- Ilya Tretiak, a character in the 1997 film The Saint
- Ilya in the book Letters from Rifka
- Ilya, a character in the book and film adaption Heaven Knows What
- Ilya Afanasyevich Shamrayev, a character in Anton Chekhov's The Seagull
- Ilya Stepanovich Igolkin, a character in Vladimir Obruchev's Plutonia
- Ilya Snegiryov, a character in Fyodor Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov
- Illyasviel von Einzbern, a character in Fate series by Type-Moon
- Ilya Rozanov, a character in the book and TV show adaptation ''Heated Rivalry''