Alice
Meaning
"of noble kind," from Adalheidis worn down through Old French Aalis; a medieval queen's name that Lewis Carroll sent down the rabbit hole into permanent storybook fame. The vintage revival returned it to the top tier across Europe and beyond
Famously borne by Alice Neel, whose portraits included pregnant nudes and Harlem neighbors. Famously borne by Alice Walker, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Color Purple.
The story
Alice arrived in England with the Normans as Aalis, worn down from the Germanic Adelais, a name meaning noble, and by the Middle Ages it was everywhere from castle to village. Its modern fame has one great source: in 1865 Lewis Carroll sent a fictional Alice down the rabbit hole, borrowing the name of a real little girl, Alice Liddell, and fixed it forever as the name of curious, level-headed girls in impossible situations. American parents of a century ago used it in droves, as the early records show. Fashion drifted away through the postwar decades, and by the 1970s Alice had gone quiet without ever disappearing. Then came the vintage revival: the name has been climbing again for two decades and now stands among the strongest risers of its era, an heirloom back in daily use.
Alice around the world
One shared root links 21 names across 3 languages.
Shared root: a Germanic family built on adal "noble": Adalheidis "of noble kind" wore down through Old French Aalis into Alice and a crowd of descendants
The constellation
15 more branches of this family
Popularity, 1890–2024
Shape drawn from US Social Security baby-name records. Alice peaked in the 1890s and the 1900s in nearly equal measure.
Popularity in Brazil
488,951 people · the #44 first name in Brazil · about 1 in 415 · median age 7
Among people named Alice living in Brazil at the 2022 census, more were born in the 2010s than in any other decade.
The census also counted 118,235 born between 2020 and August 2022, too recent a span to chart.
Source: IBGE, Censo Demográfico 2022
The Alice deep dive
Whether you’re naming a baby or exploring your own name’s history, this is a personal letter, not a list: where Alice truly comes from, how it traveled, and what a century of records reveals. If you have grown a tree on nametree, it also considers how Alice fits with your family’s names and surname.
Where Alice travels
Portuguese · noble, truthful
Chinese American · a graceful classic across generations
Italian · noble, truth
Keep exploring
Names like Alice · Nicknames for Alice · Middle names for Alice · Italian baby names · Portuguese and Brazilian baby names · Chinese American baby names
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