Elsie is the Scottish diminutive of Elizabeth — from the Hebrew Elisheba ("my God is my oath"). A top-50 US baby name from 1880 to 1898, peaking at #38 in 1888. Elsie de Wolfe (1865-1950) — *American actress and interior designer; widely considered the first professional female interior decorator in the world — her 1913 book The House in Good Taste established American interior decoration as an industry and her white-on-white color schemes broke from Victorian dark palettes. Lady Mendl (married Sir Charles Mendl in 1926); her Versailles villa was the setting for Salvador Dalí, Cole Porter, and the Duke and Duchess of Windsor. Decorated the Colony Club (1907) — the first all-women's social club in New York; the Whitney Museum (1911); the J.P. Morgan Jr. residence. Elsie Dinsmore — heroine of Martha Finley's 1867-1905 series of 28 Christian children's novels — the most-read American children's series of the 19th century before Little Women*. Elsie the Borden Cow — Borden Dairy's mascot since 1936; one of the most-recognized commercial mascots in 20th-century American advertising. Elsie Roberts — American chef. Elsie Locke (1912-2001) — New Zealand author and activist.
Featured throughout late-19th and early-20th century American culture.
In Pythagorean numerology the letters of Elsie reduce to 5, The Seeker. This is a traditional interpretive system, not a factual claim about the name.