Aleksander
Masculine · “defender of men”
Aleksander is the form Alexander takes in Polish, Norwegian, Danish and Estonian, where the letter x never settled into the alphabet and ks does the same work. Behind the spelling sits one of the oldest continuously used names in Europe, carried out of Greek into nearly every language it met. Said aloud it has four unhurried beats and a familiar landing, so it explains itself the moment it is spoken, even to someone seeing it written for the first time.
How old is the name Aleksander?
Aleksander first appears in US birth records in 1918 — 107 years ago. The typical Aleksander alive today was born around 2011, making them about 14 years old. About 4,100 people named Aleksander are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Aleksander most popular?
Aleksander peaked in 2009, reaching #1103 nationally. Today it ranks #1425, 322 places below that high. See the whole 2009 chart.
Aleksander appears on this list:
Where it comes from
From Alexandros to Aleksander
The story of Aleksander
The name begins in Greek as Alexandros, old enough to appear in the Iliad as a second name for the Trojan prince Paris. Its spread across the world owes most to Alexander the Great, king of Macedon in the fourth century BC, whose campaigns left the name in use from the Mediterranean to Central Asia. Christianity carried it further, through early saints and later through a line of popes and patriarchs, and each language reshaped it: Alessandro in Italian, Alejandro in Spanish, Sándor in Hungarian. Aleksander is the northern and Slavic settlement of that same name, standard in Poland and across Scandinavia, and it reached American records with the great waves of migration from those regions.
Meaning
defender of men
From the Greek Alexandros, combining alexein, to defend or ward off, with the stem andr-, man.
How the name formed
- Alexandros
- Alexander
- Aleksandr
- Aleksander
Related forms: Alexander · Alexandros · Aleksandr · Alessandro · Alejandro · Sándor
Pronouncing Aleksander
al-ek-SAN-der
Stress on the third syllable, exactly as in Alexander. Polish speakers place the stress the same way; the ks is pronounced, not softened.
Nicknames for Aleksander
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
- 1918
- Most boys named
- 2014171 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #1103reached in 2009
- Change vs 2024
- +26.0%126 in 2025, from 100
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.
Aleksander in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Alexander in English — spelling variant
- Alexandros in Greek — same name
- Aleksandr in Russian — transliteration
- Alessandro in Italian — same name
- Alejandro in Spanish — same name
- Sándor in Hungarian — related form
Strongest US states over the last decade: California, Illinois, New York.
Aleksanders among us
people named Aleksander are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 boy in 13,556 born in 2025 was named Aleksander
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Spellings of Aleksander
- #1425
- Aleksander on the 2025 chart
- #31
- counting every spelling
The SSA counts spellings, not names. Aleksander went to 126 boys in 2025, but Alexander is the same name said out loud. Together the 4 spellings went to 7,372, which makes it the 31st most-given boys’ name of the year — 1,394 places above the chart.
- Alexander7,230
- Aleksander126
and 2 rarer spellings.
About 1 boy in 232 born in 2025 was given one of these spellings — against 1 in 13,556 for Aleksander 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 Antron test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Aleksander's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Antron climbed just as high around 1980, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Antron's path sketches the road Aleksander is walking now.
Aleksander 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 Aleksander is headed
Aleksander should hold steady through 2030 — the curve is flat, and flat curves are the most predictable kind.
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.
Aleksander beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Aleksander in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US boys given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- Understood on sight almost anywhere, since close forms exist in Greek, Polish, Spanish, Italian, Russian and English.
- An unusually deep set of short forms — Alex, Aleks, Sasha, Olek, Sander — so the child has room to choose.
- More than two thousand years of continuous documented use, with no gap in the record.
- The ks spelling marks a specific Polish, Scandinavian or Baltic line of the name rather than a modern invention.
- Familiar in sound while rare on the page: a classmate is unlikely to share it.
- The spelling will be corrected to Alexander for life — on forms, in email, by teachers reading a list. Most people who use this form simply spell it out once and move on.
- Shortened to Alex, the name joins a very large group, and the distinctiveness of the full spelling disappears in daily use.
- Four syllables is a lot of name next to a short surname, though the built-in nicknames absorb most of that.
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What they receive
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Aleksander
Masculine · #1425 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Aleksanders are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 4,100 people named Aleksander are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How do you spell Aleksander?
- Aleksander is one of 2 recorded spellings. Alexander is the more common one — 7,230 births in 2025 against 126 for Aleksander.
- How popular is the name Aleksander in 2025?
- Aleksander ranks #1425 among US boy names in 2025, with 126 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Aleksander?
- About 1 in every 13,556 US boys born in 2025 was named Aleksander — 126 in all.
- Will my child share the name Aleksander with classmates?
- Aleksander will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Aleksander
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
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Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Aleksander? See the current top 100.
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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