Álister
surname · Latin script
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 1 country
Álister is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. Recorded meaning: From Old Irish Alaxander, from Latin Alexander, from Ancient Greek Ἀλέξανδρος (Aléxandros), from ἀλέξω (aléxō, “I defend”) + ἀνήρ (anḗr, “man”).
- GYGuyana1 in 15K(measured from records)
- UYUruguay1 in 169K
- USUnited States1 in 257K
carrying the name, as counted by each country's national register. Countries with no figure are shown too: flat where a national register lists the name without counting it, hatched where only our records hold it. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United States (measured from records)
- Record sources
- 40 (measured from records)
- 1 in 15K (inferred from the name graph)
1,292 people, 2020
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Guyana
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts
(measured from records)One other spelling is counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Alister in US United States, BR Brazil, ES Spain.
Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records, and ○ marks a model's transliteration; click a spelling to open its page.
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)- Old IrishAlaxander(measured from records)
- LatinAlexander(measured from records)
- Ancient GreekἈλέξανδροςAléxandros(measured from records)
- Ancient Greek rootἀλέξωaléxō“I defend”(measured from records)
From Old Irish Alaxander, from Latin Alexander, from Ancient Greek Ἀλέξανδρος (Aléxandros), from ἀλέξω (aléxō, “I defend”) + ἀνήρ (anḗr, “man”).
Cited for this meaning 3
- A Dictionary of English Surnames
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Wiktionary
Attested across 14 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world
(measured from records)Álister counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.
Sorted by bearers: national registers' counts, and Mondonomo's estimates (≈, est.) where no register counts.
1,292 people counted by Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex, 2020. Exact figures are national registers' own counts, while figures marked ≈ and est. are Mondonomo’s estimates, counted from our sources and calibrated against those registers; hover one for how far to trust it in that country. A dash means neither exists.
Registers cited: Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror); INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); Guyana — Official List of Electors July 2025; Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); INE Uruguay — Nombres más frecuentes 1902–2024 (Tableau Public); Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts). Figures without a register are Mondonomo estimates; see Methodology.
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table (how that works).
Evidence
(measured from records)No register attests this spelling yet
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Álister mean, and where does it come from?
- From Old Irish Alaxander, from Latin Alexander, from Ancient Greek Ἀλέξανδρος (Aléxandros), from ἀλέξω (aléxō, “I defend”) + ἀνήρ (anḗr, “man”). Recorded by A Dictionary of English Surnames and The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland and 1 other source.
- In which country does Álister have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 1.3 thousand people named Álister, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled alister.
- Where is Álister most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Álister is densest in Guyana — about 1 in 15 thousand people — even though United States holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Álister?
- In the United States, the national register counted 1,292 people named Álister in 2020, about 1 in 257 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Álister?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/%C3%A1listerThe payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. It takes a free API key (1,000 requests a day), which returns what this page shows everyone; the full country table, every register citation and the year-by-year series come with a licensed key, as does bulk access.
About this data
measured from records inferred from the name graph machine-generated
These figures come from the data snapshot of and will change as it is rebuilt.
Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.
Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.
Cite this page Mondonomo, “Álister”. Data snapshot 2026-10-13.