Alpha
The first letter of the Greek alphabet, a metaphor for supremacy and preeminence.
Name Census estimates that about 2,983 living Americans carry the first name Alpha. It appears on both sides of the gender split, with 72.1% of registrations being female. The average person named Alpha today is around 41 years old, and the year with the single highest number of Alpha births was 1917 (230 babies).
This page is the full Name Census profile for Alpha. 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 Alpha with official rankings and popularity over time.
Key insights
- • Alpha was once a predominantly female name but has become increasingly popular for boys in recent decades.
People living today
3.0K
~ 1 in 114,903 Americans
Peak year
1917
230 babies that year
Average age
41
years old
2024 SSA rank
#2,039
Tracked since 1880
Census
Alpha in the 2020 Census
The 2020 Census recorded 4,113 people with the first name Alpha, which placed it at #4,502 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
#4,502
National first-name rank
People counted
4.1K
4,113 in the published race/origin table
Per 100,000
1.4
People with this name in 2020
Largest reported group
Black or African American
55.3% of people with this name
Demographics
Ancestry and ethnicity for Alpha
In the 2020 Census race and Hispanic-origin table, the largest reported group for people named Alpha is Black at 55.3%. The next largest groups are White (27.3%) and Hispanic (7.3%). 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 Alpha 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 Alpha at the time of the 2020 Census, not any inherent property of the name itself.
- Black or African American55.3% · 2,273
- White27.3% · 1,124
- Hispanic or Latino7.3% · 301
- Asian and Pacific Islander6.4% · 265
- Two or more races2.8% · 115
- American Indian and Alaska Native0.9% · 35
Gender
Gender distribution for Alpha
Alpha is one of the more evenly split names in the SSA data. Of the 9,967 total registrations, 2,785 (27.9%) were male and 7,182 (72.1%) were female.
Alpha as a male name
- Ranked #2,039 in 2024
- 74 male births in 2024
- Peak: 2024 (74 births)
Alpha as a female name
- Ranked #15,367 in 2024
- 5 female births in 2024
- Peak: 1916 (198 births)
2020 Census snapshot
The 2020 Census sex table shows Alpha on both sides of the split. Of the 4,116 people counted with this name, 2,454 were male (59.6%) and 1,662 were female (40.4%).
Popularity
Alpha: popularity over time
The SSA tracks Alpha from the 1880s through to the 2020s, spanning 15 decades of birth certificate data. The biggest single decade for the name was the 1910s, with 1,770 total registrations. Usage has dropped considerably from its 1910s peak. The most recent decade brought in only a fraction of the registrations that the name once attracted.
Babies born per year
Decades
Alpha 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 Alpha during that decade, along with a combined total. This is useful for spotting eras where the name surged or retreated.
Geography
Where Alphas live
The SSA's state-level files cover 30 states and territories. Kentucky, Texas, New York recorded the most babies named Alpha, while South Dakota, Massachusetts, Arizona recorded the fewest. The average across all reporting states is about 119 registrations each.
Origin
Meaning and history of Alpha
The name Alpha originates from the Greek alphabet, where it is the first letter. The word "alpha" itself comes from the Phoenician word "aleph," meaning "ox." This connection likely stems from a hieroglyphic representation of an ox's head, which was the symbol for the first letter in the Phoenician alphabet.
In ancient Greek, the word "alpha" was used as a term for the beginning or the first in a series. It was often used in philosophical and scientific contexts to indicate something fundamental or primordial. The name Alpha, therefore, carries connotations of being the first, the origin, or the source.
One of the earliest recorded uses of the name Alpha can be found in the works of the ancient Greek philosopher Plato, who lived from 428 BC to 348 BC. In his dialogue "Cratylus," Plato discusses the meaning and etymology of various words, including the letter alpha.
Throughout history, the name Alpha has been relatively uncommon as a personal name, but it has been used occasionally. One notable example is Alpha Pendleton (1840-1917), an American educator and activist who founded the Voorhees College in South Carolina, a historically black college.
Another famous individual with the name Alpha was Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc., the first intercollegiate Greek-letter fraternity established for African American men. It was founded in 1906 at Cornell University by seven students, including Alpha Phi Alpha (no last name recorded).
In literature, the name Alpha appears in the novel "Brave New World" by Aldous Huxley, published in 1932. In the book, the character Alpha is a member of the highest social caste in the dystopian society depicted in the story.
Alpha Oumar Konaré (born in 1946) is a Malian politician and former President of Mali, serving from 1992 to 2002. He was a prominent figure in the transition to democracy in Mali after the military dictatorship.
While not a personal name, the term "alpha" is also used in various scientific contexts, such as in the alpha particle in physics, the alpha wave in neuroscience, and the alpha diversity in ecology.
People
Alpha + last name combinations
How many people share a full name with Alpha 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
Alpha: questions and answers
How many people in the U.S. are named Alpha?
Name Census puts the figure at roughly 2,983 living Americans. We arrive at this by taking every SSA birth registration for Alpha 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 114,903 US residents.
Is Alpha a common name?
We classify Alpha as "Rare". It ranks above 95.2% of all first names in the SSA dataset by living bearers. Across the full history of the data, 9,967 babies have been registered with this name.
When was Alpha most popular?
The single biggest year for Alpha was 1917, when 230 babies received the name. The fact that the average living Alpha is about 41 years old gives you a rough sense of which era contributed the most bearers who are still alive today.
How common was Alpha in the 2020 Census?
The published 2020 Census first-name tables recorded 4,113 people with the name Alpha, or 1.36 per 100,000 residents. That placed it at #4,502 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 Alpha 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 Alpha?
The 2020 Census sex table shows Alpha on both sides of the split. Of the 4,116 people counted with this name, 2,454 were male (59.6%) and 1,662 were female (40.4%). 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 Alpha?
In the 2020 Census race and Hispanic-origin table, the largest reported group for people named Alpha is Black at 55.3%. The next largest groups are White (27.3%) and Hispanic (7.3%). 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 Alpha most often in the Census?
Black is the largest reported group for people named Alpha in the 2020 Census, accounting for 55.3% (2,273 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 Alpha in that year. That makes it useful for spotting when the name rose, peaked, or faded.
Is Alpha a female name?
Yes, 72.1% of people registered as Alpha 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 Alpha still being used today?
Yes. The SSA still recorded Alpha 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 Alpha 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 Alpha?
For a quick modern estimate, our sister site HowManyOfMe.org answers that in one glance, with the living-bearer count front and centre.