Alison
Masculine · “noble”
Alison is given to girls far more often — 116,886 girls against 595 boys since 1880. See Alison as a girl name
There are two Alisouns in the Canterbury Tales and they are the two most alive women in the book. One is the carpenter's young wife in the Miller's Tale. The other is the Wife of Bath, who has had five husbands and is not finished. Chaucer gave the same name to both, which cannot be an accident.
How old is the name Alison?
Alison first appears in US birth records in 1913 — 112 years ago. The typical Alison alive today was born around 1980, making them about 45 years old. About 500 people named Alison are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Alison most popular?
Alison peaked in 1986, reaching #2226 nationally. Today it ranks #12008, 9,782 places below that high. See the whole 1986 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From adal to Alison
The story of Alison
The -on and -in endings were the ordinary French way of making a pet form in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and English took a handful of the results as names in their own right: Alison, Marion, Perrin, Robin, Colin, Jocelin. Alison arrived with the Normans and was common enough by Chaucer's time to be the obvious name for an ordinary woman. Both of his Alisouns are exactly that: not noble, not allegorical, and given more life than anyone else in the poem. The name went out of English use for centuries and came back in the twentieth, first in Scotland, where it had never entirely gone, and then everywhere.
Meaning
noble
Alison is Alice with the Old French diminutive -on: Alis plus -on, exactly as Marie gives Marion and Pierre gives Perrin. Alice runs back through Adelais to the Germanic adal, noble. So the name is little Alice, at a distance of nine hundred years.
How the name formed
- adal
- Adelais
- Alice
- Alison
Related forms: Alison · Alison
Pronouncing Alison
AL-ih-sun
Three syllables, stress on the first. Alison, Allison and Alyson are said identically; the doubled l is the commoner American spelling and changes nothing.
Nicknames for Alison
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
- 1913
- Most boys named
- 198927 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #2226reached in 1986
- Change vs 2022
- −16.7%5 in 2025, from 6
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.
Alison in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Alison in French — same name
- Alison in Scottish — same name
Alisons among us
people named Alison are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 boy in 341,615 born in 2025 was named Alison
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Spellings of Alison
- #12008
- Alison on the 2025 chart
- #917
- counting every spelling
The SSA counts spellings, not names. Alison went to 5 boys in 2025, but Allison is the same name said out loud. Together the 2 spellings went to 11, which makes it the 917th most-given boys’ name of the year — 11,091 places above the chart.
- Allison6
- Alison5
About 1 boy in 155,280 born in 2025 was given one of these spellings — against 1 in 341,615 for Alison 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 Lander test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Alison's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Lander climbed just as high around 1949, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Lander's path sketches the road Alison is walking now.
Alison 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
Alison beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Alison in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US boys given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- A settled Germanic meaning at the end of a fully documented chain.
- Three short forms, two of which are full names in their own right.
- Continuous documented use in English and Scots for eight hundred years.
- Allison with two l's is commoner in America, so the spelling will be given often.
- It is strongly represented among people now in their thirties and forties, which places it in time.
- The very few boys given this spelling will be read as girls on paper.
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Alison
Masculine · #12008 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Alisons are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 500 people named Alison are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How do you spell Alison?
- Alison is one of 2 recorded spellings. Allison is the more common one — 6 births in 2025 against 5 for Alison.
- How popular is the name Alison in 2025?
- Alison ranks #12008 among US boy names in 2025, with 5 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Alison?
- About 1 in every 341,615 US boys born in 2025 was named Alison — 5 in all.
- Will my child share the name Alison with classmates?
- Alison will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Alison
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Garfield#12008 · Chas#12008 · Lew#12008 · Barney#12008 · Dewitt#12008 · Granville#12008 · Cicero#12008 · Willam#12008
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Alison? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Alison and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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