Ellen is the medieval English form of Helen — from the Greek helene (torch). Ellen Johnson Sirleaf (born 1938) — the 24th President of Liberia (2006-2018) and the first elected female head of state in Africa. Co-recipient of the 2011 Nobel Peace Prize with Leymah Gbowee and Tawakkol Karman "for their non-violent struggle for the safety of women and for women's rights to full participation in peace-building work." Harvard-educated economist who led Liberia's recovery from devastating civil war.
Author of This Child Will Be Great (2009).
Ellen 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 Ellen reduce to 3, The Communicator. This is a traditional interpretive system, not a factual claim about the name.