Alan
given name · Latin script
Meaning: Breton/French form from Celtic, often linked to Breton alain 'little rock; harmony'
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/ælən/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Alan is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Russia than in any other country, where it is the 2nd most common given name.
- USUnited States1 in 1.2K(measured from records)
- RURussia≈1 in 30as Елена
- BYBelarus≈1 in 35as Елена
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Alan itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- Russia (inferred from the name graph)
- #2 (measured from records)
- 10 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 644 (measured from records)
- 1 in 1.2K (inferred from the name graph)
≈4,700,000 named Елена, est.
of 15M given names
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
United States
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
19 other spellings are counted as the same name:
Locally spelled Елена in RU Russia, BY Belarus, FI Finland, Helen in US United States, Олена in UA Ukraine and Helena in BR Brazil.
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)
Breton/French form from Celtic, often linked to Breton alain 'little rock; harmony'.
Sources 1
- Le grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)
Attested across 16 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Alan 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.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| RU Russia | #2 | ≈4,700,000 est. | ≈1 in 30 | #3 | Елена | 309 |
| UA Ukraine | #2 | ≈1,100,000 est. | ≈1 in 41 | listed | Олена | 174 |
| BR Brazil | #17 | 366,186as Helena | 1 in 578 | 366K | Helena | 227 |
| US United States | #26 | 284,872 | 1 in 1.2K | 483K | Helen | 644 |
| GR Greece | #9 | 272,590as Ελένη | 1 in 39 | 520K | Ελενη | 198 |
| BY Belarus | #1 | ≈270,000 est. | ≈1 in 35 | 39 | Елена | 81 |
| FI Finland | #1 | 117,524as Helena | 1 in 47 | 175K | Елена | 116 |
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; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror); ELSTAT — population given names; According to a survey conducted by the Hellenic Statistical Authority (ELSTAT), the most popular male and female names i; Universal Dependencies Belarusian-HSE Corpus — Person Names (UD_Belarusian-HSE); DVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register); DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup). 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).
Other recorded senses(measured from records)
Alan is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In Irish, Possibly connected with ail, "noble"; may have been the name of a Celtic deity. Associated with Alan-a-Dale in Robin Hood lore.
as a nameIrish first names
In English, Irish-Scottish Gaelic; handsome, the bright fair one, the beautiful child; also term of endearment; feminine form of Alan
as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…
In English, from Breton name, often glossed as handsome or little rock
as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…
Of Celtic origin and uncertain derivation (possibly a diminutive of a word meaning ‘rock’). It was introduced into England by Breton followers of William the Conqueror, most notably Alan, Earl of Brittany, who was rewarded for his services with vast estates in the newly conquered kingdom. In Britain the vari-
as a nameA concise dictionary of first names
In English, Alternative form of alaunt.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Ordered by how much of this spelling's record each language holds, so a sense from a language the name is barely used in sits last rather than first.
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Chester A. Arthurb. 1829USnot in their usual namepresident of the United States from 1881 to 1885
- Alan Shepardb. 1923USAmerican astronaut, first American in space, lunar explorer (1923–1998)
- Alan MacDiarmidb. 1927NZNew Zealand chemist (1927–2007)
- William Shatnerb. 1931CAnot in their usual nameCanadian actor (born 1931)
- Alan Beanb. 1932USAmerican astronaut and painter (1932-2018)
- Alan Rickmanb. 1946GBBritish actor and director (1946–2016)
- Alan Garcíab. 1949PEPresident of Peru (1985–1990 and 2006–2011)
- Russell Hulseb. 1950USnot in their usual nameAmerican astronomer
- Alan Silvestrib. 1950USAmerican composer, conductor, orchestrator and music producer
- Alan Cummingb. 1965GBBritish actor (born 1965)
The ten people covered by the most Wikipedia language editions — a proxy for cross-cultural notability, which favours historical and Western figures over equally prominent contemporary ones — shown by birth year. Source: Wikidata (CC0).
How to address them(machine-generated)
A formal English salutation is built on the surname, so it needs a full name — on its own, a first name only supports the informal form.
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 131 sources across 65 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 284K | #184 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Nomes (census name API) | — | 207K | #253 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror) | 2022 | 203K | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 202K | #158 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | 2020 | 6.6K | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 1.9K | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 1.5K | #158 |
| FI Finland | DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup) | — | 1.1K | #712 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 490 | #184 |
| FI Finland | DVV — Etunimitilasto (Finnish given names register) | — | 343 | — |
Reference works 6
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Ethiopian name tokens (GitHub lehagere/ethiopian-names, 40/60 condominium list)
These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Alan mean, and where does it come from?
- Breton/French form from Celtic, often linked to Breton alain 'little rock; harmony'. Recorded by Le grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education).
- What are other forms of the name Alan?
- In the etymology graph, Allan, Alain and Alen are forms of the same name in other languages.
- Is Alan a male or female name?
- Alan is a female name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
- In which country does Alan have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 4.7 million people named Елена in Russia, more than in any other country we hold.
- Where is Alan most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Alan is densest in the United States — about 1 in 1.2 thousand people — even though Russia holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Alan?
- In the United States, the national register counted 284,872 people named Alan in 2020, about 1 in 1.2 thousand residents.
- How common is Alan compared with other names?
- In Russia, Alan is the 2nd most common given name of 472,143 given names recorded there.
- How do you pronounce Alan?
- A machine transcription gives /ælən/ (IPA) for English.
What do you want to know about Alan?
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/alanThe 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, “Alan” — the 2nd most common given name in Russia. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.