Allen
surname · Latin script
Meaning: From the male personal name Alan, of Celtic origin but unknown meaning; in England usually Allen, in Scotland Allan
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/ælən/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Allen is a surname written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Russia than in any other country, where it is the 2nd most common given name.
- RURussia≈1 in 30as Елена(inferred from the name graph)
- BYBelarus≈1 in 35as Елена
- GRGreece1 in 39as Ελένη
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 Allen 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 30 (inferred from the name graph)
≈4,700,000 named Елена, est.
of 15M given names
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Russia, est., as Елена
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)
From the male personal name Alan, of Celtic origin but unknown meaning; in England usually Allen, in Scotland Allan.
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested across 20 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Allen 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 | 284,872as Alan | 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)
Allen 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 English, Variant of Allan/Alan, from the Celtic personal name Ailean meaning ‘rock’ or ‘rocky’.
as a nameScottish Surnames
Variant spelling of Alan, in Britain generally found only as a surname, but in North America equally common as a given name.
as a nameA concise dictionary of first names
In English, An English and Scottish surname transferred from the given name derived from the given name Alan.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In German, laut Bahlow friesische Form zu Pers.N. Allo (Adalo); 245 Träger
as a nameDeutscher Familiennamenatlas, Band 6: Familiennamen aus Rufnamen
In English, v. ALLAIN
as a nameA Dictionary of English Surnames
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)
- Woody Allenb. 1935USAmerican filmmaker, actor and comedian (born 1935)
- Patrick Allenb. 1951JMJamaican politician, current Governor-General of Jamaica
- Karen Allenb. 1951USAmerican actress
- Paul Allenb. 1953USAmerican businessman and philanthropist, co-founder of Microsoft (1953–2018)
- Tim Allenb. 1953USAmerican actor and comedian
- Joan Allenb. 1956USAmerican actress (born 1956)
- Ginger Lynnb. 1962USnot in their usual nameAmerican pornographic actress
- Krista Allenb. 1971USAmerican actress
- Ray Allenb. 1975USAmerican basketball player (born 1975)
- Lily Allenb. 1985GBBritish singer and actress
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)
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 114 sources across 56 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 483K | #33 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 466K | #35 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 463K | #32 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 166K | #332 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 897 | #332 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror) | 2022 | 749 | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 582 | #10,115 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Nomes (census name API) | — | 530 | #13,791 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 507 | — |
| FI Finland | DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup) | — | 396 | #4,240 |
| FI Finland | DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup) | — | 279 | #1,515 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 167 | #10,115 |
Reference works 8
- 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
- Wikipedia surname 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
- Søndergaard, Georg, Danske efternavne (Lademann 1984/1991)
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 Allen mean, and where does it come from?
- From the male personal name Alan, of Celtic origin but unknown meaning; in England usually Allen, in Scotland Allan. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- What are other forms of the name Allen?
- In the etymology graph, Allain is a form of the same name in other languages.
- In which country does Allen have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 4.7 million people named Елена in Russia, more than in any other country we hold.
- How do you pronounce Allen?
- A machine transcription gives /ælən/ (IPA) for English.
- How common is the name Allen?
- In Brazil, the national register counted 366,186 people named Helena in 2022, about 1 in 578 residents.
- How common is Allen compared with other names?
- In Russia, Allen is the 2nd most common given name of 472,143 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Allen?
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/allenThe 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, “Allen” — the 2nd most common given name in Russia. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.