Alfred
given name · Latin script
Meaning, in English: from the medieval male personal name Alvred, from Old English /Elfr&d, literally 'elf counsel'
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/æɫfɹəd/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Alfred is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country. In Ghana it is the 32nd most common given name.
- DEGermany≈1 in 467(inferred from the name graph)
- SESweden1 in 512
- ATAustria≈1 in 650
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- China (inferred from the name graph)
- #695 (measured from records)
- 3 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 531 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 467 (inferred from the name graph)
≈670,000 people, est.
of 15M given names
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Germany, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
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)
from the medieval male personal name Alvred, from Old English /Elfr&d, literally 'elf counsel'.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 9 languages in the etymology graph.
How Alfred is read(measured from records)
Alfred is one spelling over 2 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 2 of them. Each row is what a source recorded for that language, beside the share of this name’s records the language holds. No single row is the name’s meaning.
- English67%
from the medieval male personal name Alvred, from Old English /Elfr&d, literally 'elf counsel'.
as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
from OE "elf-counsel"; first attested Alured 1066 DB
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
- German11%
a male given name, popular in the 19th century
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
The share is ours — how much of this name’s records each language holds. The sense beside it is the source’s, quoted and credited, including where it names a gender. We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Alfred 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CN China | — | ≈670,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.1K | — | Alfred | 49 |
| DE Germany | #114 | ≈170,000 est. | ≈1 in 467 | — | Alfred | 227 |
| US United States | #317 | 92,300 | 1 in 3.6K | 92K | Alfred | 531 |
| NG Nigeria | #654 | ≈71,000 est. | ≈1 in 3K | — | Alfred | 88 |
| ZA South Africa | #114 | ≈49,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.1K | — | Alfred | 103 |
| GH Ghana | #32 | ≈28,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.1K | — | Alfred | 91 |
| SE Sweden | #459 | 19,916 | 1 in 512 | 20K | Alfred | 88 |
| AT Austria | #89 | ≈14,000 est. | ≈1 in 650 | 651 | Alfred | 148 |
| DK Denmark | #340 | 7,924 | 1 in 741 | 7.9K | Alfred | 102 |
| AL Albania | — | 3,472 | 1 in 886 | 3.5K | — | 2 |
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; Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population); Statistik Austria — STATatlas Vornamen WFS (per-name time series 1984–2024); Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts); INSTAT Albania — Search the name (given-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).
Other recorded senses(measured from records)
Alfred is also recorded in 3 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In Irish, Anglo-Saxon ‘elf counsel’; imported into Ireland by the English.
as a nameIrish first names
In French, Old English name from elements meaning 'elf' + 'counsel'.
as a nameLe grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)
From an Old English name derived from elf ‘elf’, ‘supernatural being’ + red ‘counsel’. It was a relatively common name before the Norman Conquest of Britain, being borne most notably by Alfred the Great (849-899), King of Wessex. After the Conquest it was
as a nameA concise dictionary of first names
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)
- Alfred Tennysonb. 1809GBBritish Poet Laureate (1809–1892)
- Alfred Russel Wallaceb. 1823GBBritish naturalist, explorer, geographer, anthropologist and biologist (1823–1913)
- Alfred Nobelb. 1833SESwedish chemist and inventor (1833–1896)
- Alfred Sisleyb. 1839FRFrench, British painter (1839–1899)
- Alfred Marshallb. 1842GBBritish economist (1842–1924)
- Alfred Binetb. 1857FRFrench psychologist and inventor of the first usable intelligence test (1857–1911)
- Alfred North Whiteheadb. 1861GBEnglish mathematician and philosopher (1861–1947)
- Alfred Kinseyb. 1894USAmerican sexologist (1894–1956)
- Ray Millandb. 1907GBnot in their usual nameBritish actor (1907–1986)
- Alfred Moisiub. 1929ALAlbanian general and politician; former President of Albania (born 1929)
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 150 sources across 81 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 92K | #580 |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 20K | #216 |
| SE Sweden | SCB — Namnstatistik (to 2023) | 2020 | 9.7K | — |
| DK Denmark | Danmarks Statistik — Hvor mange hedder...? (living-population name counts) | — | 7.9K | #91 |
| AL Albania | INSTAT Albania — Search the name (given-name counts) | — | 3.5K | #75 |
| AT Austria | Statistik Austria — STATatlas Vornamen WFS (per-name time series 1984–2024) | 2024 | 651 | #352 |
| DK Denmark | Danmarks Statistik — Navne til nyfødte (1985–present) | 2024 | 414 | #9 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 293 | — |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 157 | #580 |
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)
- Rymut, Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (10 vols, IJP PAN, Kraków 1992–1994) — every Polish surname in the PESEL register at the end of 1990, with bearer counts nationally and per voivodeship1990
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 Alfred mean, and where does it come from?
- from the medieval male personal name Alvred, from Old English /Elfr&d, literally 'elf counsel'. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- In which country does Alfred have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 669 thousand people named Alfred in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled alfred.
- What are other forms of the name Alfred?
- In the etymology graph, Alfredo, Fred and Fredy are forms of the same name in other languages; Alfie and Alf are recorded short or pet forms.
- Is Alfred a male or female name?
- Alfred is a male 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.
- How do you pronounce Alfred?
- A machine transcription gives /æɫfɹəd/ (IPA) for English.
- How common is the name Alfred?
- In the United States, the national register counted 92,300 people named Alfred in 2020, about 1 in 3.6 thousand residents.
- How common is Alfred compared with other names?
- In Ghana, Alfred is the 32nd most common given name of 14,081 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Alfred?
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/alfredThe 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, “Alfred” — the 32nd most common given name in Ghana. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.