Alison
The story
Alison is a medieval diminutive of Alice, noble in the old Germanic, and it is genuinely old: Chaucer gave the name to two of his liveliest women six centuries before its American century. The record is a clean generational curve: about 1,500 in the 1940s, then 6,200, 12,300, 22,200, cresting at 27,200 in the 1980s, an entire cohort's name, followed by the orderly settle, 19,800, 13,300, 10,200, and 4,000 so far this decade. All-time it counts about 117,500, almost all girls. Allison, the double-l spelling, runs bigger still at about 322,900 with its own story here, and Alice, the source, is a giant at about 572,900. That is what a generational name does: it grows up with its cohort and waits for the wheel.
Alison 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
14 more branches of this family
Alison in song
Alison
Elvis Costello (1977)
A quiet, bruised song of disappointment that sounds like a lullaby until you listen to the words.
Popularity, 1890–2024
Shape drawn from US Social Security baby-name records. Alison peaked in the 1970s and the 2020s in nearly equal measure.
Popularity in Brazil
54,557 people · the #532 first name in Brazil · about 1 in 3,717 · median age 22
Among people named Alison living in Brazil at the 2022 census, more were born in the 1990s than in any other decade.
The census also counted 2,669 born between 2020 and August 2022, too recent a span to chart.
Source: IBGE, Censo Demográfico 2022
When you meet Alison
Most people given the name Alison in the United States were born between 1970 and 2009. The Alison you meet today is most often in her 30s or 40s.
Estimated from US Social Security birth registrations and typical lifespans; a rough guide, not a rule.
The Alison deep dive
Whether you’re naming a baby or exploring your own name’s history, this is a personal letter, not a list: where Alison 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 Alison fits with your family’s names and surname.
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