Alpha
#13,208 in the US in 2025
Alpha in the United States
Between 2013 and 2025 the name has been rising — up 31% as a share of girls' births.
Alpha is given to both sexes: 7,188 female and 2,857 male births on record. The two curves rarely move together, which is why they are drawn separately rather than summed.
SOURCE·US Social Security Administration, national baby-name data·Public domain. SSA lists a name only if it was given to at least 5 babies of that sex that year.·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Alpha in New Zealand
Alpha never reached 10 births in a single year in New Zealand, so it does not appear in the DIA file. That is a reporting floor, not a zero — the name may still have been registered here, just never ten times in one year.
SOURCE·NZ Department of Internal Affairs, births by first name·CC BY 4.0. DIA lists a name only if it was given to at least 10 babies of that sex that year.·REVIEWED JUL 2026
Decade by decade in the US
| Year | Rank | Births |
|---|---|---|
| 1880 | #309 | 26 |
| 1890 | #337 | 57 |
| 1900 | #378 | 78 |
| 1910 | #406 | 94 |
| 1920 | #504 | 188 |
| 1930 | #768 | 84 |
| 1940 | #841 | 72 |
| 1950 | #1,411 | 42 |
| 1960 | #2,989 | 17 |
| 1970 | #3,577 | 17 |
| 1980 | #5,544 | 12 |
| 1990 | #10,193 | 7 |
| 2000 | #7,580 | 13 |
| 2010 | below floor | — |
| 2020 | #12,142 | 7 |
Where in the United States
The states that registered Alpha most often since 1880. These are lifetime totals, so they track state population as much as local taste — a name common in Wyoming will never out-count California.
| State | Births |
|---|---|
| Kentucky | 542 |
| Texas | 505 |
| Oklahoma | 327 |
| Missouri | 277 |
| Arkansas | 194 |
| Virginia | 182 |
| Tennessee | 163 |
| Alabama | 122 |
| Minnesota | 111 |
| West Virginia | 77 |
How these figures are worked out
- Counts come straight from the registrars: the US Social Security Administration (1880–2025) and the New Zealand Department of Internal Affairs (1900–2025). Nothing is scraped from another names site.
- Ranks are computed against every name in that year's file, not just the ones this site publishes pages for — otherwise a rank would flatter every name we happen to list.
- The curve is drawn on births per 100,000 of that sex, not raw counts. Raw counts across eras are misleading: far more births were registered in 1957 than in 1890, so a flat count is a falling share.
- Each country hides small numbers — the US below 5 births a year, New Zealand below 10. A gap in a line is "below the floor", never "nobody".
SOURCE·US SSA (1880–2025) + NZ DIA (1900–2025) birth registrations·ranks and shares computed from the source files, see method·REVIEWED JUL 2026