The given name Alvin developed from the surname Elwyn, which itself is based on the Old English first names Æthelwine and Ealdwine. These mean ‘noble friend’ and ‘old friend’ respectively.
Alvin is a male first name. In very rare cases it is also used for girls.
The name Alvin 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, Alvin ranks 592. Recently, out of every 10,000 newborn boys, approximately 2 were named Alvin. In the entire USA, approximately 150,819 people – children, adults and seniors – currently bear the name Alvin. That is 0.05 % of all living Americans.
The given name Alvin developed from the surname Elwyn, which itself is based on the Old English first names Æthelwine and Ealdwine. These mean ‘noble friend’ and ‘old friend’ respectively.
Alvin was... invented in the 19th century and is spelled Alwin as the German and Dutch variant.
Appearing throughout the time in the United States, the name Alvin is a staple in the country: Boys have been given the name Alvin for more than 140 years, according to official U.S. naming statistics. Alvin is therefore one of only 442 boys’ names that have been given every year since 1880. Even beyond that, Alvin is a very special name that peaked in popularity some time ago in the 20th century. Placed at #68 Alvin easily made it into the top 100 boys' names of our SmartGenius statistics for male first names and has never been more popular than back in 1927.
In years where the graph has no value, the name Alvin was given less than five times or even none at all in the entire USA.
As many as 347 babies were named Alvin in the USA in 2022, ranking it at #690 on the list of the most popular boys' names for that year. However, it experienced its lowest point of popularity in 2021, when it was only ranked #717 of all male names in our SmartGenius statistics – back then only 322 boys were named Alvin.
There are only 386 different male names registered in every single state in the U.S., and Alvin is one of them. However, Alvin is not equally widespread in all states, but people in Louisiana seem to particularly fancy this name – the 9,115 men called Alvin who live here are 0,310% of all male residents and push their name up to #66 in our SmartGenius statistics, easily placing it in the top 100 most common male names in Louisiana. If you look at all the states in the USA together, you can currently find as many as 150,819 people with the name Alvin. Across all regions and age groups, this lands Alvin on position 213 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 five letters, the name Alvin is comparatively short. In fact, 17.0% of all common first names in the US consist of exactly five letters. Only 7% of all first names are even shorter, while 75% have more than five 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 Alvin 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 Alvin, you can simply say:
Apple
Lion
Violin
Igloo
Nut
Braille is made up of dots, which the blind and visually impaired can feel to read words.
Alvin
Alvin
Just use American Sign Language!
These flags are used for maritime communication - each flag represents a letter.
A
L
V
I
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
V
I
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. Alvin sounds like this:
