Alder
Masculine · Old English roots · “The alder tree”
Alder is given to both — 1,363 boys and 68 girls since 1880. See other names given to both
Alder is the English name of a tree that grows with its feet in water — and whose wood, submerged, turns hard as stone rather than rotting; the foundations of Venice rest on alder piles driven into the lagoon mud. As a name it is one syllable and a shrug of a second, close cousins to Alden and Elder in sound, and it has been a family surname in English and Swiss records for centuries before anyone thought to put it on a birth certificate.
How old is the name Alder?
Alder first appears in US birth records in 1915 — 110 years ago. The typical Alder is a kid of about 5 — this name's wave is very recent. About 1,300 people named Alder are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Alder most popular?
Alder peaked in 2025, reaching #1401 nationally. Today it ranks #1401, exactly where it peaked. See the whole 2025 chart.
Alder appears on this list:
Where it comes from
From alor (Old English) to Alder
The story of Alder
Alder is an ordinary English word first and a name second. Old English alor gave Middle English aller and alder, the tree of riverbanks and wet woods, valued for wood that hardens underwater and for charcoal. From the medieval period it worked as a surname — sometimes for a family living by the alders, sometimes as a worn-down form of the Old English personal name Ealdhere — and it survives as a surname in England and in the Swiss canton of Appenzell. Its use as a first name belongs to the recent English-speaking taste for botanical names, arriving alongside Rowan, Linden, Aspen and Sage; the American wave is very much a young one.
Meaning
The alder tree
The word comes from Old English alor, with cognates across Germanic — German Erle, Dutch els. The English surname Alder has a second route: some families carry it from the Old English personal name Ealdhere, 'old' plus 'army'.
How the name formed
- alorOld English
- aller / alderMiddle English
- Aldersurname
- Aldergiven name
Related forms: Alder · Alden
Pronouncing Alder
AWL-der
Two syllables, stress on the first, rhyming with 'bolder' for most American speakers. Some say AHL-der. Either way, people who know the tree already know how to say it.
Nicknames for Alder
Moderate
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
- 1915
- Most boys named
- 2025130 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #1401reached in 2025
- Change vs 2024
- +0.8%130 in 2025, from 129
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.
Alder in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Alder in Swiss German — same name
- Alden in English — related form
Strongest US states over the last decade: Washington, Oregon, California.
Alders among us
people named Alder are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 boy in 13,139 born in 2025 was named Alder
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Is it right for you
What happens to a name after it peaks
The Alvino test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Alder's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Alvino climbed just as high around 1966, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Alvino's path sketches the road Alder is walking now.
Alder 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 Alder is headed
Alder looks set to keep climbing gently, with roughly 18% 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.
Alder beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Alder in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US boys given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- An everyday English word, so the spelling is guessable from hearing it and needs no letter-by-letter explanation.
- One settled pronunciation, with no competing versions to correct.
- Al works as a short form and has stood alone as a name for well over a century.
- Sits naturally with the other tree and plant names now in use — Rowan, Linden, Aspen — so it reads as part of a recognizable group rather than an invention.
- A documented surname in both English and Swiss records, which gives it a long paper trail before its life as a first name.
- It will be misheard as Elder, and confused with Alden and Aldo. Expect a certain amount of gentle repeating on the phone.
- A child with this name will most likely be the only one anywhere nearby, which some kids enjoy and some find tiring — worth knowing either way.
- Word names invite comment. 'Like the tree' becomes a sentence said many times, usually kindly.
- Nature names are moving as a group right now, so Alder may feel rather less unusual by the time this child reaches high school than it does today.
Nobody names a baby alone.
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What they receive
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Alder
Masculine · Old English roots · #1401 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Alders are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 1,300 people named Alder are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Alder in 2025?
- Alder ranks #1401 among US boy names in 2025, with 130 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Alder?
- About 1 in every 13,139 US boys born in 2025 was named Alder — 130 in all.
- Will my child share the name Alder with classmates?
- Alder will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Alder
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Mahir#1401 · Osvaldo#1401 · Advik#1401 · Eliot#1401 · Niklaus#1401 · Micheal#1401 · Lisandro#1401 · Aariv#1393
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Alder? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Alder and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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