Alec
Masculine · “defender of men”
Alec is overwhelmingly a boys’ name — 55,152 boys against 337 girls since 1880.
Alec is the Scottish clipping of Alexander, a name carried out of Greek by one of antiquity's most famous conquerors and then worn by three medieval kings of Scots. It has been on American records since the earliest years such records were kept, never crowding the playground, never disappearing either. Four letters, two beats, and no explaining required.
How old is the name Alec?
Alec was already in use when US birth records began in 1880 — it is at least 145 years old. The typical Alec alive today was born around 1999, making them about 26 years old. About 52,000 people named Alec are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Alec most popular?
Alec peaked in 1994, reaching #109 nationally. Today it ranks #977, 868 places below that high. See the whole 1994 chart.
Alec appears on this list:
Where it comes from
From Alexandros to Alec
The story of Alec
The parent name, Alexandros, is old Greek and appears as far back as Homer's Iliad as a second name for the Trojan prince Paris. Alexander the Great carried it across the ancient world, and Christian and royal use carried it further; it reached Scotland with the medieval church and was borne by Alexander I, II and III between the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, which made it a thoroughly Scottish name. Scots speakers shortened it to Alec and Alick, alongside the Gaelic Alasdair. Emigration from Scotland brought the short form to North America, where it settled in as a given name in its own right rather than a pet form.
Meaning
defender of men
From the Greek Alexandros, combining alexein, 'to defend', with the stem andr-, 'man'.
How the name formed
- Alexandros
- Alexander
- Alasdair
- Alec
Related forms: Alick · Aleck · Alasdair · Aleksandr · Alessandro · Aleksander
Pronouncing Alec
AL-ik
Two syllables, stress on the first. Some families say a crisper AL-ek; both are accepted, and neither needs correcting.
Nicknames for Alec
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
- 1880
- Most boys named
- 19963,308 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #109reached in 1994
- Change vs 2022
- −32.4%234 in 2025, from 346
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.
Alec in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Alick in Scottish English — spelling variant
- Aleck in English — spelling variant
- Alasdair in Scottish Gaelic — related form
- Aleksandr in Russian — related form
- Alessandro in Italian — related form
- Aleksander in Polish — related form
Strongest US states over the last decade: California, Texas, Florida.
Alecs among us
people named Alec are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 boy in 7,299 born in 2025 was named Alec
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Spellings of Alec
- #977
- Alec on the 2025 chart
- #656
- counting every spelling
The SSA counts spellings, not names. Alec went to 234 boys in 2025, but Alek is the same name said out loud. Together the 2 spellings went to 284, which makes it the 656th most-given boys’ name of the year — 321 places above the chart.
- Alec234
- Alek50
About 1 boy in 6,014 born in 2025 was given one of these spellings — against 1 in 7,299 for Alec 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 Kurt test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Alec's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Kurt climbed just as high around 1964, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Kurt's path sketches the road Alec is walking now.
Alec sits in the calm middle of the cycle — neither chasing a wave nor sliding off one. Middle-of-the-cycle names age slowly and predictably.
A scored estimate from 146 years of naming cycles — not a prophecy. Great names outlive statistics. How this is scored
Where Alec is headed
Alec is easing off slowly — about 22% fewer babies a year by 2030 if the trend continues.
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.
Alec beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Alec in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US boys given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- Short, phonetic and spelled the way it sounds — four letters most English speakers write correctly on the first try.
- Belongs to the Alexander family, so a child can be given the long form on the birth certificate and Alec everywhere else.
- Relatives of the name exist in Greek, Gaelic, Italian, Polish and Russian, so it travels without translation.
- On US records continuously since the very beginning of the modern statistics, with a broad plateau rather than a single fashionable spike.
- Alec and Alex sit close enough that he will spend a lifetime gently correcting the substitution — on forms, in emails, and from teachers reading a class list aloud.
- The idiom 'smart aleck' uses the older spelling but sounds identical, and older schoolyards have made the joke before. It is mild and it passes, but it exists.
- It is a short form by origin, so it offers no dignified longer version for a résumé or a wedding program unless you register Alexander as the legal name.
- Its strongest years are recent enough that the name currently reads as belonging to adults in their twenties and thirties rather than to babies — which is also why a child named Alec is unlikely to share it with a classmate.
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What they receive
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Alec
Masculine · #977 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Alecs are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 52,000 people named Alec are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How do you spell Alec?
- Alec is the most-used spelling in US records — 234 of the 284 babies given the name in 2025. The others recorded are Alek.
- How popular is the name Alec in 2025?
- Alec ranks #977 among US boy names in 2025, with 234 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Alec?
- About 1 in every 7,299 US boys born in 2025 was named Alec — 234 in all.
- Will my child share the name Alec with classmates?
- Alec will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Alec
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Azlan#977 · Toby#977 · Byron#980 · Loyal#980 · Damir#980 · Ameer#980 · Mathew#973 · Kaycen#973
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Alec? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Alec and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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