Alex

Popularity, 1880–2025

girls named Alex boys named Alex

By the numbers

Total US births

295,991

Estimated living today

253,000

Median age today

28

Peak year

1993

Best rank

52nd

Rank in 2025

232nd

First recorded

1880

Girls / boys

9,822 / 286,169

How old the living Alexes are

born that year still alive today

Of the 295,991 babies given the name since 1880, about 253,000 are alive — 85 in every hundred. Roughly 57,000 of them are children and 11,000 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1997 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 Ancient Greek

from Ancient Greek Ἀλέξανδρος 'he who wards off men', i.e. Also from Alexius, from the same Ancient Greek first element, "helping, defending". These two origins of Alex are indistinguishable in most languages. The female name has the same root, a or the female name Alexis, in some cases also a spelling variant of Alix.

Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Notable Alexs

• Alex Salmond (1954–2024)Alba Party leader and First Minister of Scotland 2007–2014
• Alex Morgan (born 1989)American soccer player
• Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain (born 1993)English association football player
• Alex Turner (born 1986)British musician
• Alex Iwobi (born 1996)Nigerian association football player
• Alex Song (born 1987)Cameroonian and French footballer
• Alex Sandro (born 1991)Brazilian footballer
• Alex Haley (1921–1992)American biographer, screenwriter, and novelist

People named Alex with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).

Where Alex is most common

• CA41,655
• TX23,198
• NY22,763
• IL14,564
• FL13,226
• PA11,669
• OH11,129
• MI9,853
• NJ8,740
• GA6,883

Relative to how many babies each state records, Alex is most concentrated in Nevada (1.8×), Arizona (1.7×), New Mexico (1.5×), Utah (1.5×).

Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.

Names of 1993

The most popular boys’ names the year Alex peaked:

• Michael
• Christopher
• Matthew
• Joshua
• Tyler
• Brandon

All the names of 1993

Alex elsewhere

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.

Alex: births by region

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, Alex is most concentrated in Ticino, where 0.44% of children were given it – 276 of them.

Alex: rank by region

In 2025, Alex was given 5 times or more in 3 regions of Belgium.

In 2024, Alex was among the 10 most common names in 2 regions of Spain.

In 2024, Alex was among the 10 most common names in 1 region of Italy. It has come first somewhere in 3 different years.

In 2025, Alex was given 2 times or more in 16 regions of Poland.

In 2025, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Alex appears in the lists for Brussels-Capital Region (104th), Province of Antwerp (106th), Province of Flemish Brabant (155th) and Province of East Flanders (198th).

Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children, Spain after 10 names, Italy after 10 names, Poland below 2 children – 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.

Alex by city

One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.

Alex 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.

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 Alex lives in Spain

Not a count of births but of people: 53,051 men called Alex and 572 women called Alex 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

Listed in 51 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 1 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.

Women: the provinces where it is densest

Listed in 23 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 29 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

• Alexander
• Alexis
• Alexandra
• Alejandro
• Alexa
• Alexandria
• Alec
• Alejandra
• Alexia
• Alessandra
• Alexus
• Aleah

Alex against another name

Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.

• Alex vs Alexander
• Alex vs Alexis
• Alex vs Alexandra
• Alex vs Alejandro
• Alex vs Alexa
• Alex vs Alexandria

Compare Alex with a name of your own