Originally, Alison was a diminutive of the French Alice, which goes back to the name Adelheid. It contains the Old High German word parts “adal” for “noble, distinguished” and “haidu” for “manner, shape”.
Alison is a female first name. In very rare cases it is also used for boys.
The name Alison 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 girls names, Alison ranks 334. Recently, out of every 10,000 newborn girls, approximately 6 were named Alison. In the entire USA, approximately 111,740 people – children, adults and seniors – currently bear the name Alison. That is 0.03 % of all living Americans.
Originally, Alison was a diminutive of the French Alice, which goes back to the name Adelheid. It contains the Old High German word parts “adal” for “noble, distinguished” and “haidu” for “manner, shape”.
This name... was common in England, Scotland and France in the Middle Ages, and was later revived in the 20th century.
This was a real surprise! Alison is a name that has been around for a long time, but only really took off at the end of the 20th century. According to our SmartGenius statistics, it reached its highest rank at #93 in the year 1986, when 3,000 parents chose this name for their newborn daughter. This made Alison much more popular than in previous generations, where it was so rare for several years that it was not even recorded in the statistics. Now, this name seems to have found its place and has established itself in the beginning of the 21st century as well.
In years where the graph has no value, the name Alison was given less than five times or even none at all in the entire USA.
In 2022, Alison ranked 417 in our SmartGenius statistics. In absolute figures, this means it was given to baby girls a total of 697 times. No one knows what names (or combinations of numbers and letters) will be popular 50 years from now, but given its consistent popularity, there is a good chance that Alison will remain a universally popular name.
The name Alison may not be in the top rankings of the most popular girls’ names, but it is one of the few female given names, along with only 536 others, that can be found in every single state in the U.S. from Alaska to Florida and from California to New York. Of course, the name occurs more frequently in some states than in others – and Alison is apparently especially popular in Connecticut. Although the name is not one of the top 100 most popular women’s names here either, one in 634 women in Connecticut is called Alison. In total, that’s 2,626 women who feel addressed when the name Alison is shouted loudly across Connecticut and who ensure that their name makes it to #164 in our SmartGenius ranking of the most common female names in this nice state. If you asked all women in the entire U.S. for their first name, you would hear Alison as the answer a total of 111,724 times. This places Alison at #303 in our SmartGenius statistics for the most popular women’s names in the whole of the USA. This is true for all currently living women across all states and age groups – the recent popularity of the name Alison as a baby name is, of course, a bit 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 the most popular first letter for girls’ names. 11.8% of all common girls’ names in the US start with this letter. The second most common first letter in girls' names is S.
With six letters, the name Alison is of average length. In fact, 28% of all common first names in the US consist of exactly six letters. 24% of all first names are shorter, while 48% have seven letters or more. 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 11.8% of all girls' names start with an A, this initial letter occurs over three times as often as all other letters on average. And, by the way, of all the girls' names that begin with the letter A, the name Ashley is the most common.
If your name is Alison 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 Alison, you can simply say:
Apple
Lion
Igloo
Sun
Orange
Nut
Braille is made up of dots, which the blind and visually impaired can feel to read words.
Alison
Alison
Just use American Sign Language!
These flags are used for maritime communication - each flag represents a letter.
A
L
I
S
O
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
I
S
O
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. Alison sounds like this:
