Alison
The girl's name Alison has been in the national records since 1905, with 117,481 births to its name. In 2025 it ranked 476th. About 111,000 Alisons are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 39.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Alison boys named Alison
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 117,481
- Estimated living today
- 111,000
- Median age today
- 39
- Peak year
- 1980
- Best rank
- 101st
- Rank in 2025
- 476th
- First recorded
- 1905
- Girls / boys
- 116,886 / 595
How old the living Alisons are
born that year still alive today
Of the 117,481 babies given the name since 1905, about 111,000 are alive — 94 in every hundred. Roughly 17,000 of them are children and 7,100 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1986 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 Germanic languages
From Middle English Alisoun, from Old French Alison, brought to England by the Normans (from Anglo-Norman Alison, from Norman Alison), diminutive of Aliz, equivalent to English Alice, from Old High German Adalhaid (“of noble kind”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Alisons
- Alison Brie (born 1982)American actress and writer
- Alison Krauss (born 1971)American musician
- Alison Lohman (born 1979)American actress
- Alison Pill (born 1985)Canadian actress
- Alison Bechdel (born 1960)American cartoonist, author
- Alison Sudol (born 1984)American musician
- Alison Riske-Amritraj (born 1990)American tennis player
- Alison Doody (born 1966)Irish actress and model
People named Alison with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Alison is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Alison is most concentrated in Connecticut (2.1×), Massachusetts (1.9×), New Hampshire (1.8×), New Jersey (1.6×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1980
The most popular girls’ names the year Alison peaked:
Alison elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| France girls | Alison | 16,005 | 39th |
| Scotland girls | Alison | 5,666 | 16th |
| Ireland girls | Alison | 5,474 | 33rd |
| New Zealand girls | Alison | 3,444 | 30th |
| England and Wales girls | Alison | 1,308 | 225th |
| Belgium girls | Alison | 838 | 58th |
| Italy girls | Alison | 760 | — |
| Switzerland girls | Alison | 217 | 253rd |
| Northern Ireland girls | Alison | 72 | 118th |
| France boys | Alison | 10 | 2,520th |
| Poland girls | Alison | 10 birth registrations | 548th |
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.
Alison: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German girls | Switzerland | Alison | 67 | 0.005% | 395th |
| French girls | Switzerland | Alison | 134 | 0.031% | 101st |
| Italian girls | Switzerland | Alison | 16 | 0.025% | 104th |
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, Alison is most concentrated in Valais, where 0.04% of children were given it – 25 of them.
Alison: rank by region
In 2021, Alison was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Alison | 774 | 6 |
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 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.
Alison by city
| City | Years | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin girls | 2017–2023 | 2 | 555th |
One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.
Alison 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Finland girls | Alison | 31 | 56 |
A count of people on a register – 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 Alison lives in Spain
Not a count of births but of people: 1,005 women called Alison were living in Spain on 1 January 2025, of every age, born in any year. Where they live is not spread evenly.
Women: the provinces where it is densest
| Province | Spelling | People | Per thousand | Place there |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Palmas, Las | Alison | 78 | 0.132 | 780 |
| Alicante/Alacant | Alison | 93 | 0.090 | 864 |
| Santa Cruz de Tenerife | Alison | 44 | 0.079 | 1,121 |
| Málaga | Alison | 67 | 0.073 | 902 |
| Balears, Illes | Alison | 41 | 0.065 | 1,071 |
| Murcia | Alison | 48 | 0.061 | 981 |
Listed in 32 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 20 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
Alison 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.