Eleni is the Ge'ez form of Helen — from Greek Hēlēnē ("torch, light"). Empress Eleni of Ethiopia (c. 1431-1522) was the longest-lived and most influential Ethiopian regent of the medieval period.
Featured in the Royal Chronicles of Ethiopia.
Eleni 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 Eleni reduce to 9, The Giver. This is a traditional interpretive system, not a factual claim about the name.