Alain
given name · Latin script
Meaning: From Breton Alan, possibly meaning 'harmonious' or 'little rock'
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/alɛ̃/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Alain is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in France than in any other country, where it is the 20th most common given name.
- FRFrance≈1 in 274(inferred from the name graph)
- CMCameroon≈1 in 294
- BEBelgium≈1 in 295
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 Alain 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.
- France (inferred from the name graph)
- 3 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 431 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 274 (inferred from the name graph)
≈250,000 people, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
France, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
One other spelling is counted as the same name:
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 Breton Alan, possibly meaning 'harmonious' or 'little rock'.
Sources 1
- Le grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)
Attested across 21 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Alain 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| FR France | #20 | ≈250,000 est. | ≈1 in 274 | 507K | Alain | 431 |
| US United States | — | 166,924as Allen | 1 in 2K | 483K | Alain | 392 |
| CM Cameroon | #6 | ≈95,000 est. | ≈1 in 294 | — | Alain | 62 |
| CD Congo - Kinshasa | #36 | ≈66,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.5K | — | Alain | 45 |
| BE Belgium | #14 | ≈40,000 est. | ≈1 in 295 | 1K | Alain | 187 |
| HR Croatia | — | 10,033as Alen | 1 in 421 | 10K | — | — |
| ES Spain | #625 | 5,501 | 1 in 9.1K | 5.5K | Alain | 126 |
| SI Slovenia | — | 4,101as Alen | 1 in 513 | 4.1K | — | 6 |
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: INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024); Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Familienaam.be — Belgian family-name frequency (population register); INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos); DZS — Imena i prezimena (per-token lookup form); SURS — resident population given names; stat.si Imena rojstva — full name register (per-token frequency + rank). 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)
Alain 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 French, Du latin Alānī, nom d’un ancien peuple originaire de Scythie.
as a nameDictionnaire des noms de famille du Canada français. Anthroponymie et généalogie. 2e édition
In French, Origine latine, « originaire des Alani », tribu vivant au Ve s. près de la mer Noire.
as a nameLe grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)
In French, Du germanique Adal- « noble »; fête le 9 septembre (Saint Alain).
as a nameDictionnaire généalogique des prénoms
In French, Du latin, issu d’Alani, nom d’une tribu venue de la mer Noire.
as a nameLe grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)
In French, Nom d’origine celtique; fêté le 9 septembre (saint Alain).
as a nameDictionnaire généalogique des prénoms
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)
- Alain Poherb. 1909FRFrench politician (1909-1996)
- Alain Delonb. 1935FRFrench actor (1935–2024)
- Alain Juppéb. 1945FR92nd Prime Minister of France (born 1945)
- Alain Aspectb. 1947FRFrench physicist
- Alain Prostb. 1955FRFrench racing driver (born 1955)
- Alain Ducasseb. 1956FRFrench chef
- Alain de Bottonb. 1969CHSwiss-born British philosopher and writer
- Fabien Barthezb. 1971FRnot in their usual nameFrench footballer (born 1971)
- Alain Bersetb. 1972CHSwiss politicians
- Didier Zokorab. 1980CInot in their usual nameIvorian association football player
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 102 sources across 54 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024) | 2024 | 507K | #1,482 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 8.5K | #2,702 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 5.5K | #824 |
| ES Spain | INE — Nombres más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 5.2K | #391 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 168 | #2,702 |
| SI Slovenia | SURS — resident population given names | 2025 | 47 | #1,127 |
| SI Slovenia | stat.si Imena rojstva — full name register (per-token frequency + rank) | — | 47 | #2,243 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 44 | — |
| HR Croatia | DZS — Imena i prezimena (per-token lookup form) | 2021 | 19 | #3,848 |
| HR Croatia | DZS — Učestalost osobnih imena (Popis 2021) | 2021 | 18 | — |
Reference works 7
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)
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
- How do you pronounce Alain?
- A machine transcription gives /alɛ̃/ (IPA) for French.
- What does the name Alain mean, and where does it come from?
- From Breton Alan, possibly meaning 'harmonious' or 'little rock'. Recorded by Le grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education).
- Is Alain a male or female name?
- Alain 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.
- In which country does Alain have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 248 thousand people named Alain in France, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled alain.
- What are other forms of the name Alain?
- In the etymology graph, Alan, Allan and Alen are forms of the same name in other languages.
- How common is the name Alain?
- In Spain, the national register counted 5,501 people named Alain, about 1 in 9.1 thousand residents.
- How common is Alain compared with other names?
- In France, Alain is the 20th most common given name of 754,146 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Alain?
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/alainThe 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, “Alain” — the 20th most common given name in France. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.