Elaine is the medieval French form of Helen — from the Greek hēlē (sun, light, shining). In Arthurian romance Elaine of Astolat is the "fair maid" who dies of unrequited love for Lancelot; Elaine of Corbenic bore Galahad.
Subject of countless 2020s athletics retrospectives.
Elaine does not currently appear in the US Social Security Administration's top 1,000 girls' names, so we don't publish a US rank or birth count for it. That says nothing about the name's standing elsewhere in the world — only that it sits outside the ranked US data we rely on.
In Pythagorean numerology the letters of Elaine reduce to 1, The Leader. This is a traditional interpretive system, not a factual claim about the name.