The county was named in 1869 for John M. Elliott, born in Virginia in 1820, who came to this area in 1830, was admitted to the bar in 1843, served in the Kentucky legislature from 1847 to 1853, in the U.S. Congress from 1853 to 1859, and again in the Kentucky legislature in 1861 before being expelled for his southern sympathy. He then served in the Congress of the Confederate States from 1862 to 1865, became a circuit judge in 1868 and a judge on the Kentucky Court of Appeals in 1876, and was assassinated in 1879 by a disappointed litigant in a land case decided by the court.