Alain
given name · French · Latin script
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Alain is a given name, with more bearers in France than in any other country, where it is the 15th most common given name. It appears chiefly in French and Spanish, written in the Latin script. Recorded meaning: From Breton Alan, possibly meaning 'harmonious' or 'little rock'.
- FRFrance1 in 134◐
- GPGuadeloupe1 in 208
- BEBelgium1 in 401
carrying the name, one hue, darker where it is more common. Hover a country for its figure.
- ≈697K ●
- #912 ●
- 3 ●
- Sources
- 406 ●
- 1 in 134 ◐
across 11 countries
of 16M given names
recorded for this name
1.0M records
Official registry-verified
France
Spellings & scripts●
Locally spelled Allen in GR Greece.
Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records; ○ marks a model's transliteration. Click a spelling to open its page.
Meaning & origin●
From Breton Alan, possibly meaning 'harmonious' or 'little rock'.
Sources 1
- Le grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)
Attested across 21 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world●
Sorted by bearers counted by national registers, records where none counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| FR France | #15 | 506,990 | 834K rec. | 1 in 134 | 507K | Alain | 406 |
| US United States | — | 166,027△ | 46K rec. | 1 in 2K | 483K | Alain | 357 |
| BE Belgium | #18 | 38,613 | 41K rec. | — | 1K | Alain | 173 |
| CA Canada | #384 | 31,993 | 30K rec. | — | 5 | Alain | 187 |
| MX Mexico | #1000 | 19,721 | 13K rec. | — | 31 | Alain | 145 |
| PE Peru | — | 12,678 | 11K rec. | — | — | Alain | 50 |
| HR Croatia | — | 10,033 | 0 rec. | 1 in 421 | 10K | — | 1 |
| PH Philippines | — | 8,412 | 5.5K rec. | — | — | Alain | 64 |
| GR Greece | #137 | 8,001 | 17K rec. | — | — | Allen | 45 |
| CH Switzerland | #73 | 7,821 | 4K rec. | — | 210 | Alain | 149 |
| AR Argentina | — | 7,267 | 4.8K rec. | — | 933 | Alain | 50 |
| ES Spain | #867 | 5,501 | 9.6K rec. | 1 in 9.1K | 5.5K | Alain | 122 |
Roughly 507K people in France bear this name (about 1 in 134). Estimates project the name's share of our records onto national population, so each is only as good as the record base beside it — the Basis column gives that base; rows marked △ rest on fewer records than the estimate itself and are order-of-magnitude at best.
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table. How that works.
Languages●
- French2.8M91%
- Spanish81K3%
- English78K3%
- Portuguese30K1%
- German8K1%
Show as table
| Name | Records | Note |
|---|---|---|
| French | 2,812,200 | 91% |
| Spanish | 80,896 | 3% |
| English | 78,349 | 3% |
| Portuguese | 30,317 | 1% |
| German | 8,044 | 1% |
Language is read off each record's context, not declared by the bearer; a share is of all records for this spelling.
Other recorded senses●
Alain is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In French, Du latin Alānī, nom d’un ancien peuple originaire de Scythie.
as a nameDictionnaire des noms de famille du Canada français. Anthroponymie et généalogie. 2e édition
In French, Origine latine, « originaire des Alani », tribu vivant au Ve s. près de la mer Noire.
as a nameLe grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)
In French, Du germanique Adal- « noble »; fête le 9 septembre (Saint Alain).
as a nameDictionnaire généalogique des prénoms
In French, Du latin, issu d’Alani, nom d’une tribu venue de la mer Noire.
as a nameLe grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)
In French, Nom d’origine celtique; fêté le 9 septembre (saint Alain).
as a nameDictionnaire généalogique des prénoms
Ordered by how much of this spelling's record each language holds, so a sense from a language the name is barely used in sits last rather than first.
Over time●
Show as table
| Year | records |
|---|---|
| 1942 | 5 |
| 1944 | 5 |
| 1946 | 8 |
| 1947 | 12 |
| 1948 | 12 |
| 1949 | 11 |
| 1950 | 19 |
| 1951 | 13 |
| 1952 | 6 |
| 1953 | 22 |
| 1954 | 15 |
| 1955 | 15 |
| 1956 | 24 |
| 1957 | 23 |
| 1958 | 21 |
| 1959 | 25 |
| 1960 | 29 |
| 1961 | 23 |
| 1962 | 35 |
| 1963 | 37 |
| 1964 | 47 |
| 1965 | 32 |
| 1966 | 32 |
| 1967 | 46 |
| 1968 | 35 |
| 1969 | 42 |
| 1970 | 43 |
| 1971 | 46 |
| 1972 | 42 |
| 1973 | 39 |
| 1974 | 45 |
| 1975 | 50 |
| 1976 | 66 |
| 1977 | 47 |
| 1978 | 43 |
| 1979 | 36 |
| 1980 | 49 |
| 1981 | 52 |
| 1982 | 69 |
| 1983 | 70 |
| 1984 | 74 |
| 1985 | 83 |
| 1986 | 80 |
| 1987 | 89 |
| 1988 | 92 |
| 1989 | 80 |
| 1990 | 77 |
| 1991 | 79 |
| 1992 | 71 |
| 1993 | 81 |
| 1994 | 51 |
| 1995 | 69 |
| 1996 | 62 |
| 1997 | 67 |
| 1998 | 59 |
| 1999 | 60 |
| 2000 | 54 |
| 2001 | 67 |
| 2002 | 63 |
| 2003 | 81 |
| 2004 | 60 |
| 2005 | 72 |
| 2006 | 73 |
| 2007 | 68 |
| 2008 | 61 |
| 2009 | 57 |
| 2010 | 54 |
| 2011 | 63 |
| 2012 | 64 |
| 2013 | 74 |
| 2014 | 51 |
| 2015 | 57 |
| 2016 | 55 |
| 2017 | 55 |
| 2018 | 61 |
| 2019 | 49 |
| 2020 | 48 |
| 2021 | 47 |
| 2022 | 49 |
| 2023 | 51 |
| 2024 | 37 |
| 2025 | 44 |
US SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) — 82 years between 1942–2025. One register's own figures, never a sum across registers: two registers counting the same people would double them.
Notable people with this name●
- Alain Poherb. 1909FRFrench politician (1909-1996)
- Alain Delonb. 1935FRFrench actor (1935–2024)
- Alain Juppéb. 1945FR92nd Prime Minister of France (born 1945)
- Alain Aspectb. 1947FRFrench physicist
- Alain Prostb. 1955FRFrench racing driver (born 1955)
- Alain Ducasseb. 1956FRFrench chef
- Alain de Bottonb. 1969CHSwiss-born British philosopher and writer
- Fabien Barthezb. 1971FRnot in their usual nameFrench footballer (born 1971)
- Alain Bersetb. 1972CHSwiss politicians
- Didier Zokorab. 1980CInot in their usual nameIvorian association football player
The ten people covered by the most Wikipedia language editions — a proxy for cross-cultural notability, which favours historical and Western figures over equally prominent contemporary ones — shown by birth year. Source: Wikidata (CC0).
Evidence●
Attested in 100 sources across 54 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024) | 2024 | 507K | #1,482 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 8.5K | #2,702 |
| ES Spain | INE — Padrón per-token widgets (current living counts, given + apellidos) | — | 5.5K | #824 |
| ES Spain | INE — Nombres más frecuentes (Padrón Municipal) | — | 5.2K | #391 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror) | 2022 | 1.5K | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 1.5K | #6,194 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Nomes (census name API) | — | 1.4K | #7,363 |
| NL Netherlands | Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (live per-name BRP counts, 1790-2017) | — | 1.3K | #1,811 |
| EC Ecuador | INEC — civil registry names | 2024 | 648 | #850 |
| FI Finland | DVV — Nimipalvelu (Finnish name service, per-name lookup) | — | 525 | #2,037 |
| SE Sweden | Skatteverket — Sök hur många som har ett visst namn (living population) | — | 439 | #3,036 |
| FR France | INSEE — Fichier des noms de famille (1891–2000) | 1991 | 236 | — |
Reference works 7
- Dictionary of American Family Names
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)
These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.
Register rows as of the 2026-09-12 data build · 924 rows in the corpus for this spelling.
Frequently asked questions
- How common is the name Alain?
- We estimate roughly 697 thousand people bear Alain (counting its spellings and scripts) across 11 countries in our records.
- In which country does Alain have the most bearers?
- We estimate about 507 thousand people bear Alain in France, more than in any other country in our records, where it is most often spelled alain.
- Where is Alain most common?
- Alain is densest in France, where the national register counts about 1 in 134 people carrying it.
- How common is Alain compared with other names?
- In France, Alain is the 15th most common given name of 711,207 given names recorded there.
- Is Alain a male or female name?
- Alain is a male name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
- What does the name Alain mean?
- Recorded meaning: From Breton Alan, possibly meaning 'harmonious' or 'little rock'.
Query this name via API
curl https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/alainThe same payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. Rate-limited for casual use. Bulk access and licensing.
About this data
Data snapshot . Figures are rebuilt periodically and will change.
Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.
Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.
Cite this page Mondonomo, “Alain” — the 15th most common given name in France. Data snapshot 2026-09-12.