Elisabeth Charlotte was born on 27 May 1652 in the castle of Heidelberg as the second child and only daughter of Charles I Louis, Elector Palatine, and his wife Charlotte of Hesse-Kassel. Named after her paternal grandmother Elizabeth Stuart and her own mother, from a young age she was nicknamed "Liselotte", a portmanteau of both her names. She was at birth very weak and thin, so an emergency baptism was performed upon her. She first grew up in the Reformed Protestant faith, the most widespread denomination in the Electoral Palatinate at that time.