Alan is a first name typically given to boys, but in rare cases also used as a girls name.
The name Alan isn’t among the current fashionable names in our top 10 stats, but nonetheless, it’s still very popular and common. In our SmartGenius ranking of all boys names, Alan ranks 162. Recently, out of every 10,000 newborn boys, approximately 13 were named Alan. In total, there are currently 352,662 people – children, adults and seniors – named Alan living in the United States, which is approximately 0.11 % of the entire population.
The origin of the first name Alan is still puzzled over today. Celtic-Breton roots in the meaning ‘small rock’ or also ‘handsome, stately’ and ‘warrior’ are considered probable. In other interpretation, the name is translated as ‘from the people of the Alans’.
The Alans were... ancient and medieval nomads from Iran. They were documented by foreign observers from the 1st century AD onward.
#40 - this is the highest position Alan has ever reached. Most names never manage to reach such high popularity in even one of the 143 years of records.The last time Alan reached this top position was in the last century, in 1951, when 8,425 newborn boys were named Alan. But as our statistics show, Alan has not always been a popular name: in some years of records, lastly in the year 1883, it was either not given to newborns at all or less than 5 times (a name is only included in the official statistics if it is given at least 5 times in a year). Even today it's not at the peak of its popularity, nevertheless Alan is still the first choice of some parents every year as the most beautiful first name for their newborn sons.
In years where the graph has no value, the name Alan was given less than five times or even none at all in the entire USA.
In 2022, 1,998 newborns were given the name Alan, making them rank #187. Although the name Alan was more popular in the last century than it is today, it is still common and for some parents it is the name of choice for their sons. So the chances of an encounter with a young Alan are still there in our contemporary times.
There are only 386 different male names registered in every single state in the U.S., and Alan is one of them. However, Alan is not equally widespread in all states, but people in Hawaii seem to particularly fancy this name – the 2,404 men called Alan who live here are 0,443% of all male residents and push their name up to #55 in our SmartGenius statistics, easily placing it in the top 100 most common male names in Hawaii. If you look at all the states in the USA together, you can currently find as many as 352,662 people with the name Alan. Across all regions and age groups, this lands Alan on position 90 in our SmartGenius ranking of the top male names – of course, the current popularity as a baby name for newborns looks somewhat different, as you can see from the statistics above.
Well, you might say, you probably figured that out yourself! But what you might not know is: The letter A is a very popular first letter for boys’ names. That’s because 9.0% of all common boys’ names in the US begin with this letter. Only the first letter J is more common for boys' names.
With four letters, the name Alan is shorter than most other given names. In fact, only 5.5% of all common first names in the US consist of exactly four letters. Just 1.2% of all first names are even shorter, while 93% consist of more than four letters. On average, first names in the US (not counting hyphenated names) are 6.5 letters long. There are no significant differences between boys' and girls' names.
That means that if 9.0% of all boys' names start with an A, this initial letter occurs nearly three times as often as all other letters on average. And by the way: Of all the boys' names that start with an A, Anthony is the most common.
If your name is Alan and someone asks after your name, you can of course just tell them what it is. But sometimes that isn't so easy - what if it's too loud, and you don't understand them well? Or what if the other person is so far away that you can see them but not hear them? In these situations, you can communicate your name in so many other ways: you call spell it, sign it, or even use a flag to wave it...
So that everyone really understands you when you have to spell the name Alan, you can simply say:
Apple
Lion
Apple
Nut
Braille is made up of dots, which the blind and visually impaired can feel to read words.
Alan
Alan
Just use American Sign Language!
These flags are used for maritime communication - each flag represents a letter.
A
L
A
N
In the navy, sailors of two ships might wave flags to each other to send messages. A sailor holds two flags in specific positions to represent different letters.
A
L
A
N
In Morse code, letters and other characters are represented only by a series of short and long tones. For example, a short tone followed by a long tone stands for the letter A. Alan sounds like this:
