Alfreda
Feminine · “elf-counsel”
Alfreda is overwhelmingly a girls’ name — 11,383 girls against 35 boys since 1880.
Alfreda is Alfred with a Latin ending, and Alfred means counsel from the elves. That is not a poetic reading — the Old English compound joins the word for an elf to the word for advice, and the Anglo-Saxons meant it: elves were supernatural beings whose favor was worth having, and a child named for their counsel was well started.
How old is the name Alfreda?
Alfreda first appears in US birth records in 1881 — 144 years ago. The typical Alfreda alive today was born around 1947, making them about 78 years old. About 5,900 people named Alfreda are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Alfreda most popular?
Alfreda peaked in 1925, reaching #456 nationally. See the whole 1925 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From Ælfræd to Alfreda
The story of Alfreda
Alfred is one of the very few Anglo-Saxon men's names to survive the Norman conquest in continuous use, kept alive by the king of Wessex who held off the Danish invasions and who later centuries made into a national hero. The feminine came much later and by the ordinary route: adding -a to a man's name is the oldest way European languages have of making a woman's, and English applied it freely in the nineteenth century to Alfreda, Wilhelmina, Roberta and Georgina alike. It reached America in that wave and has been quiet since.
Meaning
elf-counsel
Old English Aelfraed joins aelf, an elf, with raed, counsel or advice. The elf element is common in Anglo-Saxon names — it stands at the front of Alvin, Elvis and Aubrey too — and it referred to real supernatural figures in the pre-Christian belief system rather than to anything decorative. Raed also ends Conrad and Ethelred. The derivation is not disputed. The -a ending is Latin and marks the name as a woman's without adding to the sense.
How the name formed
- Ælfræd
- Alfred
- Alfreda
Related forms: Elfriede · Alfreda · Alfreda
Pronouncing Alfreda
al-FREE-duh
al-FREE-duh, three syllables, stress in the middle. Some say AL-fruh-duh with the weight at the front, following Alfred, and both are heard. German gives its own form four syllables and a quite different shape.
Nicknames for Alfreda
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
- 1881
- Most girls named
- 1959294 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #456reached in 1925
- Change vs 2006
- 0.0%5 in 2018, from 5
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.
Alfreda in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Elfriede in German — related form
- Alfreda in Italian — same name
- Alfreda in Polish — same name
Alfredas among us
people named Alfreda are estimated to be alive in the US today
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Is it right for you
Questions parents actually ask
Fashion outlook
Alfreda sits outside the current charts, and that is its own kind of answer: naming cycles can only date the names they carried up. A name this rare has no decade stamped on it — it cannot go out of fashion, because it was never in.
Based on 146 years of naming cycles. How we read them
The trade-off
- The derivation is fully documented and genuinely surprising, which is a good thing for a name to have.
- Freda and Allie are both available and they sound like two different names.
- It descends from a name with a thousand years of unbroken English use behind it.
- The stress falls in two places depending on the speaker, and neither is standard.
- It is strongly associated with the oldest living generations and reads as belonging to them.
- The relation to Alfred is audible, and anyone who knows the men's name will hear the name as derived from it.
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Alfreda
Feminine
Frequently asked
- How many Alfredas are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 5,900 people named Alfreda are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Alfreda in 2025?
- Alfreda is rarely given in the US today — it does not rank in the top 2000 girl names.
- Will my child share the name Alfreda with classmates?
- Alfreda will almost certainly be the only one in school.
More A names
The most-given names starting with A, all years combined.
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Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Alfreda? See the current top 100.
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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