Alanna
Feminine
Alanna is overwhelmingly a girls’ name — 27,012 girls against 7 boys since 1880.
Alanna reaches us through Alan, a Breton name carried into England by Breton followers of William the Conqueror and never really out of use since. The feminine forms grew up much later, and this one keeps the double-n that gives it three unhurried syllables and a soft landing. It is a name climbing rather than fading — familiar in sound, but rarely doubled up in a classroom.
How old is the name Alanna?
Alanna first appears in US birth records in 1930 — 95 years ago. The typical Alanna alive today was born around 2004, making them about 21 years old. About 26,500 people named Alanna are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Alanna most popular?
Alanna peaked in 2025, reaching #280 nationally. Today it ranks #280, exactly where it peaked. See the whole 2025 chart.
Alanna appears on this list:
Where it comes from
From Alan (Old Breton) to Alanna
The story of Alanna
Alan arrived in England from Brittany in the eleventh century and settled in so thoroughly that it became an English name outright, then a surname, then a name again. The feminine forms — Alana, Alanna, Alannah — are much younger, products of the twentieth century's habit of building girls' names from established boys' ones. At the same time, English speakers in Ireland had long used alannah as a spoken endearment, and the two streams have run together ever since, which is why nobody can cleanly separate them. In the United States the name has been in steady use across many generations, strongest in the big, mixed populations of California, Texas and Florida.
Meaningscholars disagree
Most often read as a feminine form of Alan; also tied to the Irish English endearment alannah, "O child"
Two serious readings compete. The first treats Alanna as a feminine form of Alan, an Old Breton name whose own meaning has never been settled — "rock" and "deer" have both been proposed, neither proven. The second connects it to alannah, an Anglo-Irish term of endearment recorded in dictionaries and drawn from Irish a leanbh, "O child". A third reading links it to Irish álainn, "beautiful". None of the three has pushed the others out.
How the name formed
- AlanOld Breton
- AlanNorman and Middle English
- Alana
- Alanna
Related forms: Alana · Alannah · Alanah · Alaina · Alanis · Alan
Pronouncing Alanna
uh-LAN-uh
Two pronunciations are both in real use: uh-LAN-uh with the vowel of "can", and uh-LAH-nuh with the vowel of "father". Neither is wrong, so it is worth deciding which one you want said and saying it first.
Nicknames for Alanna
High
What the data says
146 years of official birth records
The long climb, and where it stands now
The same years in position rather than babies
- First recorded
- 1930
- Most girls named
- 20251,099 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #280reached in 2025
- Change vs 2023
- +62.3%1,099 in 2025, from 677
Rank is a position, a count is a headcount, and they move independently — a name can hold its rank while the number of babies behind it falls. Source: U.S. Social Security Administration.
Alanna in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Alana in English — spelling variant
- Alannah in English / Irish English — spelling variant
- Alanah in English — spelling variant
- Alaina in English — related form
- Alanis in English — related form
- Alan in Breton / English — related form
Strongest US states over the last decade: California, Texas, Florida.
Alannas among us
people named Alanna are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 girl in 1,462 born in 2025 was named Alanna
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Spellings of Alanna
- #280
- Alanna on the 2025 chart
- #82
- counting every spelling
The SSA counts spellings, not names. Alanna went to 1,099 girls in 2025, but Alana, Alannah and Alanah and the rest below are the same name said out loud. Together the 6 spellings went to 3,429, which makes it the 82nd most-given girls’ name of the year — 198 places above the chart.
and 1 rarer spelling.
About 1 girl in 469 born in 2025 was given one of these spellings — against 1 in 1,462 for Alanna itself.
Spellings are grouped by a fixed rule that folds interchangeable English spellings of one sound (ck/k, ph/f, x/ks, a non-initial y for i) and keeps vowels apart, so Sean and Shawn stay separate names. It errs towards splitting: a family here is never larger than the truth. SSA national data, 2025. Method
Is it right for you
What happens to a name after it peaks
The Christian test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Alanna's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Christian climbed just as high around 1992, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Christian's path sketches the road Alanna is walking now.
Alanna is climbing fast right now. Steep climbs tend to come with steep descents — the quicker a name arrives, the more firmly it belongs to its moment.
A scored estimate from 146 years of naming cycles — not a prophecy. Great names outlive statistics. How this is scored
Where Alanna is headed
Alanna looks set to keep climbing gently, with roughly 34% more babies a year by 2030 if the current curve holds.
Medium confidence — fitted on official counts through 2025.
A damped-trend projection of the official birth data — a sketch of momentum, not a promise. Every name's forecast, ranked.
Alanna beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Alanna in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US girls given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- Built on Alan, a name English speakers have known for nearly a thousand years, so the spelling reads correctly on sight even to people who have never met an Alanna.
- Ready-made short forms already in circulation: Lana, Ally, Annie.
- In continuous American use across many generations, and currently moving up rather than drifting out of fashion.
- Works in several languages without adjustment, with close cousins in Alana, Alannah and Alaina.
- It sits in a crowded cluster — Alana, Alannah, Alanah, Alaina — that all sound close to identical. Expect a lifetime of spelling it out, and expect forms and rosters to guess wrong now and then.
- The two accepted pronunciations, uh-LAN-uh and uh-LAH-nuh, mean she will occasionally correct people, or decide not to bother.
- The meaning is genuinely unsettled. If you want one clean line to give relatives, this name will not supply it — though it will supply three interesting ones.
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What they receive
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Alanna
Feminine · #280 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Alannas are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 26,500 people named Alanna are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How do you spell Alanna?
- Alanna is one of 5 recorded spellings. Alana is the more common one — 2,085 births in 2025 against 1,099 for Alanna.
- How popular is the name Alanna in 2025?
- Alanna ranks #280 among US girl names in 2025, with 1,099 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Alanna?
- About 1 in every 1,462 US girls born in 2025 was named Alanna — 1,099 in all.
- Will my child share the name Alanna with classmates?
- Alanna will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Alanna
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Lena#279 · Shiloh#281 · Sylvie#282 · Azalea#278 · Lilith#277 · Rosie#283 · Harmony#276 · Antonella#284
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Alanna? See the current top 100.
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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