Alain
The boy's name Alain has been in the national records since 1942, with 3,986 births to its name. In 2025 it ranked 2,833rd. About 3,700 Alains are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 32.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Alain boys named Alain
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 3,986
- Estimated living today
- 3,700
- Median age today
- 32
- Peak year
- 1988
- Best rank
- 1,023rd
- Rank in 2025
- 2,833rd
- First recorded
- 1942
- Girls / boys
- 6 / 3,980
How old the living Alains are
born that year still alive today
Of the 3,986 babies given the name since 1942, about 3,700 are alive — 93 in every hundred. Roughly 970 of them are children and 170 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1993 and half after.
An estimate, not a count. SSA births aged forward through SSA cohort life tables, which know nothing about who left the country or arrived in it — so for a name that mostly came to America rather than being born in it, this is a floor rather than a figure. Where you fall among living Americans.
Where the name comes from
Origin French
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Alains
- Alain Delon (1935–2024)French actor
- Alain Prost (born 1955)French racing driver
- Alain Resnais (1922–2014)French film director
- Alain Aspect (born 1947)French physicist
- Alain Badiou (born 1937)French writer and philosopher
- Alain Robbe-Grillet (1922–2008)French author and film director
- Alain Juppé (born 1945)92nd Prime Minister of France
- Alain Poher (1909–1996)French politician
People named Alain with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Alain is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Alain is most concentrated in Florida (9.7×), New York (3.2×), California (2.6×), Texas (1.6×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1988
The most popular boys’ names the year Alain peaked:
Alain elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| France boys | Alain | 506,945 | 3rd |
| Switzerland boys | Alain | 476 | 130th |
| Belgium boys | Alain | 184 | 391st |
| England and Wales boys | Alain | 41 | 3,362nd |
| France girls | Alain | 20 | 1,379th |
| Scotland boys | Alain | 18 | 271st |
| Ireland boys | Alain | 15 | 249th |
| Poland boys | Alain | 6 birth registrations | 588th |
Counts come from each country's own records and are not comparable with the US figures above, which cover different years and a different definition of a recorded name. Where a country writes the name several ways, the spellings are added together and the most common is shown. A row marked name registrations is counting something else: Portugal ranks each of a child's two given names separately, so a girl registered Maria Leonor is in both the Maria row and the Leonor row, and that figure is not a number of children.
Alain: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German boys | Switzerland | Alain | 383 | 0.031% | 120th |
| French boys | Switzerland | Alain | 71 | 0.016% | 112th |
| Italian boys | Switzerland | Alain | 22 | 0.034% | 90th |
Parts of a country counted above, not extra births. The share is what makes the regions comparable: they differ in size by a factor of three hundred.
By canton, Alain is most concentrated in Bern, where 0.06% of children were given it – 130 of them.
Alain: rank by region
In 2008, Alain was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wallonia | Alain | 412 | 6 |
In 2024, Alain was among the 10 most common names in 1 region of Italy.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Valle d'Aosta/Vallée d'Aoste | Alain | 8 | 1 |
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children, Italy after 10 names – and published nothing after. So a region missing here is one where the name fell outside what was published, not one where it went unused. Places are shared where names tie, and the further down a list a place is, the more names can share it.
Alain among the living
How many people each country's register counts under the name, rather than how many were given it in any one year. Each register was read on one date, and they are not the same date.
| Country | Spelling | First forename | Any forename |
|---|---|---|---|
| the Netherlands boys | Alain | 1,275 | 2,039 |
| Finland boys | Alain | 26 | 70 |
| the Netherlands girls | Alain | — | 21 |
A count of people on a register – the Netherlands on 1 January 2018, Finland on 4 August 2026 – and not of births, so it cannot be compared with the figures above. Names with very few bearers are withheld, and a dash in the first-forename column means the register would not say rather than that nobody goes by it.
Where Alain lives in Spain
Not a count of births but of people: 5,501 men called Alain were living in Spain on 1 January 2025, of every age, born in any year. Where they live is not spread evenly.
Men: the provinces where it is densest
| Province | Spelling | People | Per thousand | Place there |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bizkaia | Alain | 1,600 | 2.832 | 83 |
| Gipuzkoa | Alain | 896 | 2.500 | 88 |
| Araba/Álava | Alain | 360 | 2.138 | 93 |
| Navarra | Alain | 448 | 1.322 | 123 |
| Cantabria | Alain | 92 | 0.320 | 284 |
| Burgos | Alain | 52 | 0.287 | 314 |
Listed in 47 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 5 it is either held by fewer than 5 people – the point below which the source withholds a name – or it fell past the 5,000 names the source will print for one province. Neither means nobody there is called it. The rate is the source's own, not a share worked out here.
Related names
Alain against another name
Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.
Try it on yourself
Source: US Social Security Administration, national and state baby-name files, 1880–2025. Counts include only births registered with the SSA, and names with fewer than five births in a year are not published. The living estimate applies SSA cohort life tables to those births; it counts people born in the United States, so it misses anyone who arrived later and anyone who has left.