Eliade

Eliade is a Romanian surname. The best-known bearer is Mircea Eliade (1907–1986), a Romanian historian of religion, philosopher, and writer who became one of the leading scholars of religion in the 20th century.

Mircea Eliade was born in Bucharest and studied at the University of Bucharest and the Sorbonne in Paris. He began his career as a novelist, most notably with Maitreyi (1933), a semi-autobiographical romance based on his time in India. His later work as a scholar developed a phenomenological approach to religion, focusing on myth, ritual, and the sacred. He coined the term hierophany to describe the appearance of the sacred in the ordinary world. Major works include The Myth of the Eternal Return (1949), The Sacred and the Profane (1957/1959), and Yoga: Immortality and Freedom (1958).

Impact and reception: Eliade's work shaped modern religious studies and the anthropology of religion by emphasizing myth as a primary means through which humans experience time and meaning. His writings have been influential across disciplines but are also debated for essentialist elements and methodological criticisms, and he spent much of his career in exile in France and the United States, where he taught for several decades at the University of Chicago.

The surname Eliade can refer to others sharing the name, but Mircea Eliade remains the most widely known bearer. He died in Chicago in 1986.