Alice
A feminine name of Germanic origin meaning "noble" or "exalted one".
Name Census estimates that about 185,768 living Americans carry the first name Alice. It sits at #62 in the overall ranking, outside the top 50 but still well-represented. The name is used almost exclusively for girls. The average person named Alice today is around 52 years old, and the year with the single highest number of Alice births was 1921 (11,990 babies). In terms of living bearers, it sits close to Shane (185,751).
This page is the full Name Census profile for Alice. Below you will find a gender breakdown showing how the name splits between male and female registrations, a year-by-year popularity chart stretching back to 1880, decade-level totals, the top US states for this name, its meaning and etymology, and a set of frequently asked questions with data-backed answers.
For a British comparison, Name Census UK has a UK baby-name profile for Alice with official rankings and popularity over time.
Key insights
- • Although Alice is used almost entirely for girls, the SSA data does show 1,959 boys registered with the name since 1880.
People living today
186K
~ 1 in 1,845 Americans
Peak year
1921
11,990 babies that year
Average age
52
years old
2024 SSA rank
#62
Tracked since 1880
Census
Alice in the 2020 Census
The 2020 Census recorded 225,226 people with the first name Alice, which placed it at #249 in the published first-name tables. This is a snapshot of people who already had the name at the time of the Census.
The SSA sections elsewhere on this page answer a different question: how often parents gave the name to babies over time. The "people living today" figure on this page is different again: it is a current estimate built from SSA birth records and age-based survival rates, so the two numbers are not expected to match exactly.
2020 Census rank
#249
National first-name rank
People counted
225K
225,226 in the published race/origin table
Per 100,000
74.6
People with this name in 2020
Largest reported group
White
70.1% of people with this name
Demographics
Ancestry and ethnicity for Alice
In the 2020 Census race and Hispanic-origin table, the largest reported group for people named Alice is White at 70.1%. The next largest groups are Black (11.8%) and Hispanic (8.4%). These figures describe the people who had the name in 2020, not any inherent property of the name itself.
The bar chart below shows how people with the first name Alice described their own race and ethnicity on the 2020 Census form. The Census Bureau groups responses into six broad categories: White, Black or African American, Hispanic or Latino, Asian and Pacific Islander, American Indian and Alaska Native, and Two or More Races. When a category has too few respondents for a given name, the Bureau suppresses the figure to protect individual privacy, which is why some names show fewer than six slices.
Percentages are shown so the breakdown is easy to read across every published category. Because the 2020 Census first-name file also includes raw headcounts for each group, Name Census can show those alongside the percentages in the legend and hover tooltip.
Keep in mind that these are self-reported numbers. A first name does not determine a person's race or ethnicity, and the distribution you see here reflects the specific population who happened to carry the name Alice at the time of the 2020 Census, not any inherent property of the name itself.
- White70.1% · 157,968
- Black or African American11.8% · 26,661
- Hispanic or Latino8.4% · 18,919
- Asian and Pacific Islander6.3% · 14,206
- Two or more races2.5% · 5,602
- American Indian and Alaska Native0.8% · 1,870
Gender
Gender distribution for Alice
Out of the 586,537 babies given the name Alice since 1880, 99.7% were registered as female. The name sits firmly on the female side of the spectrum, with only a handful of male registrations across the entire dataset.
Alice as a male name
- Ranked #10,964 in 2024
- 6 male births in 2024
- Peak: 1925 (51 births)
Alice as a female name
- Ranked #62 in 2024
- 3,520 female births in 2024
- Peak: 1921 (11,955 births)
2020 Census snapshot
In the 2020 Census sex table, Alice appears almost entirely female. Of the 225,222 people counted with this name, 99.8% were female and only a very small share were male.
Popularity
Alice: popularity over time
The SSA tracks Alice from the 1880s through to the 2020s, spanning 15 decades of birth certificate data. The biggest single decade for the name was the 1920s, with 110,911 total registrations. Usage has dropped considerably from its 1920s peak. The most recent decade brought in only a fraction of the registrations that the name once attracted.
Babies born per year
Decades
Alice by decade
The table below breaks the full SSA timeline into ten-year windows. Each row shows how many male and female babies were given the name Alice during that decade, along with a combined total. This is useful for spotting eras where the name surged or retreated.
| Decade | Male | Female | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1880s | 56 | 17,142 | 17,198 |
| 1890s | 100 | 24,415 | 24,515 |
| 1900s | 123 | 35,232 | 35,355 |
| 1910s | 251 | 85,866 | 86,117 |
| 1920s | 385 | 110,526 | 110,911 |
| 1930s | 398 | 78,968 | 79,366 |
| 1940s | 259 | 72,392 | 72,651 |
| 1950s | 156 | 52,075 | 52,231 |
| 1960s | 95 | 26,952 | 27,047 |
| 1970s | 52 | 11,134 | 11,186 |
| 1980s | 40 | 7,331 | 7,371 |
| 1990s | 6 | 6,466 | 6,472 |
| 2000s | 0 | 8,269 | 8,269 |
| 2010s | 25 | 30,630 | 30,655 |
| 2020s | 13 | 17,180 | 17,193 |
Geography
Where Alices live
The SSA's state-level files cover 51 states and territories. New York, Pennsylvania, California recorded the most babies named Alice, while Nevada, Alaska, Wyoming recorded the fewest. The average across all reporting states is about 9,927 registrations each.
Origin
Meaning and history of Alice
The name Alice is derived from the Old French name Alis, which itself came from the German name Adalhaidis. This name can be traced back to the 8th century and is a compound of the Germanic words "adal" meaning "noble" and "haid" meaning "kind" or "sort."
The name Alice has been popular in English-speaking countries since the Middle Ages. It is believed to have been introduced to England after the Norman Conquest of 1066. The first recorded use of the name Alice in England dates back to the 12th century.
One of the earliest historical references to the name Alice can be found in the works of the French poet and philosopher, Alain de Lille (c. 1128 - c. 1202). He wrote a work titled "De Planctu Naturae" (The Complaint of Nature) which featured a character named Alice.
In the 13th century, the name Alice gained widespread popularity in Europe due to its association with the French Queen Alice of Champagne (c. 1192 - 1246). She was the daughter of King Philip II of France and was married to King Hugh I of Cyprus.
Another notable historical figure with the name Alice was Alice of Ibelin (c. 1254 - 1324), who was the Queen of Cyprus and Jerusalem. She played a significant role in the political affairs of the Crusader states in the Eastern Mediterranean.
The name Alice also appears in various literary works, most famously in Lewis Carroll's "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" (1865). The protagonist, Alice, is a young girl who falls down a rabbit hole and encounters a fantasy world filled with bizarre characters.
Other notable individuals named Alice throughout history include Alice Roosevelt Longworth (1884 - 1980), the daughter of U.S. President Theodore Roosevelt; Alice B. Toklas (1877 - 1967), an American writer and life partner of Gertrude Stein; and Alice Walker (born 1944), an American novelist and poet best known for her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel "The Color Purple."
Notable bearers
Famous people named Alice
People
Alice + last name combinations
How many people share a full name with Alice as the first name? Click a combination below to see the estimate, or search any pairing.
Related
Other names starting with A
Other first names starting with A with a similar number of bearers.
FAQ
Alice: questions and answers
How many people in the U.S. are named Alice?
Name Census puts the figure at roughly 185,768 living Americans. We arrive at this by taking every SSA birth registration for Alice going back to 1880 and adjusting each cohort for expected survival using CDC actuarial life tables. The result is an age-weighted living-bearer count, not a raw birth total. That works out to about 1 in 1,845 US residents.
Is Alice a common name?
We classify Alice as "Common". It ranks above 99.7% of all first names in the SSA dataset by living bearers. Across the full history of the data, 586,537 babies have been registered with this name.
When was Alice most popular?
The single biggest year for Alice was 1921, when 11,990 babies received the name. The fact that the average living Alice is about 52 years old gives you a rough sense of which era contributed the most bearers who are still alive today.
How common was Alice in the 2020 Census?
The published 2020 Census first-name tables recorded 225,226 people with the name Alice, or 74.57 per 100,000 residents. That placed it at #249 in the national Census ranking for first names.
Why is the Census count different from the living estimate?
Because they measure different things. The Census figure is a count of people who had the name Alice in 2020. The living estimate aims to answer a current question instead: how many people with the name are alive today, based on SSA birth records and age-based survival rates. Since one number is a 2020 snapshot and the other is a present-day estimate, they are not expected to be identical.
What does the Census say about the gender split for Alice?
In the 2020 Census sex table, Alice appears almost entirely female. Of the 225,222 people counted with this name, 99.8% were female and only a very small share were male. The Census view is a snapshot of people living with the name in 2020, while the SSA section above tracks births across time.
What does the Census say about the background of people named Alice?
In the 2020 Census race and Hispanic-origin table, the largest reported group for people named Alice is White at 70.1%. The next largest groups are Black (11.8%) and Hispanic (8.4%). These figures describe the people who had the name in 2020, not any inherent property of the name itself. The percentages in the chart above come from self-reported race and Hispanic-origin responses in the 2020 Census.
Which group reports the name Alice most often in the Census?
White is the largest reported group for people named Alice in the 2020 Census, accounting for 70.1% (157,968 people in the published table).
Why can the Census sex total and race total differ slightly?
The Census Bureau published separate 2020 tables for sex and for race/Hispanic origin, and the released figures can differ slightly because of privacy protection in the public files. That is why this page treats the gender section and the race/origin section as two related snapshots instead of forcing them into one identical total.
Does every first name have Census demographic data?
No. The public Census first-name release only includes names that met the Bureau's publication rules, so many rarer names in the SSA files have no Census demographic snapshot. When that happens, the SSA trend, gender history, and state sections still appear, but the 2020 Census demographic sections are omitted.
What does the SSA popularity chart show?
The chart tracks births, not the number of people alive with the name today. Each point shows how many babies were given the name Alice in that year. That makes it useful for spotting when the name rose, peaked, or faded.
Is Alice a female name?
Yes, 99.7% of people registered as Alice in the SSA data are female. You can see the full per-sex comparison in the gender distribution section above, which includes the latest year rank, birth count, and peak year for each sex.
Is Alice still being used today?
Yes. The SSA still recorded Alice in 2024, and the page above shows its latest-year rank where available. A name can be well past its peak and still remain in steady use, especially if it built up a large population over earlier decades.
Why can a name have a lot of living bearers even if it is not trendy now?
Because living-bearer counts and current baby-name popularity measure different things. A name like Alice can build up a very large population over many decades, even if fewer parents are choosing it now than they did at its peak.
Where does this data come from?
First-name figures come from the Social Security Administration's national baby name files, which cover every name on a birth certificate from 1880 to 2024. Living-bearer estimates layer in CDC actuarial life tables broken out by sex to account for mortality. The population baseline (342,754,338) is the Census Bureau's latest national estimate. You can read the full calculation on our methodology page.
How many people share the name Alice?
For a faster, more casual read, check HowManyOfMe.org — our sister site built around that single question.