Allen

166,924 people in America carry this name — ranked #332 of 923.

A name of the post-war decades.

Say it A luhn

2 syllables · the capitals are the stressed part

Phonetic transcription

AE1 L AH0 N — ARPAbet, as published in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. The digit on a vowel marks its stress.

  • People counted 166,924 2020 Census
  • Rank #332 Common
  • Per 100,000 55.3 about 1 in 1,986 people
  • As a surname 465,583 ranked #35 the other way round

The meaning and origin of Allen

Latin in origin, reading literally as “cheerful”.

Origins are a matter of scholarly argument rather than record, and a name can be traced more than one way. We state one reading and say where it came from.

Allen through the years

270,955 babies were given this name since 1880. The busiest year was 1951, with 5,205 of them.

80 90 00 10 20 30 40 50s 60 70 80 90 00 10 20

Most people carrying it were born in the 1950s. It has been given less often of late.

Counted from Social Security card applications, so it covers births registered in the United States and leaves out names given to fewer than five babies in a year.

Middle names for Allen

Two syllables sit with almost anything — the join matters more than the length.

Better avoided

  • Allen Andrew — same opening
  • Allen Anthony — same opening
  • Allen Nicholas — runs together

Chosen by sound from the pronouncing dictionary, then ordered by how often the name is given. None of it is a rule — the ear decides.

A name and a surname

Allen is carried in front of the comma and behind it — thousands of Americans have it as a surname too.

Is Allen used for boys or for girls?

99.5% men
897 women

As recorded on census returns, not as anyone thinks the name ought to be used.

Full names people carry

The census counts first names and surnames separately and never together, so these are estimates: how often the two halves would meet if they paired at random. They do not — names cluster by community — so read them as an order of magnitude, not a headcount.

The states where Allen is most common

In Louisiana the name is given 1.6 times as often as it is across the country.

  • Louisiana ×1.6
  • South Carolina ×1.6
  • West Virginia ×1.6
  • Mississippi ×1.5
  • Arkansas ×1.5

Measured against the state's own share of births since 1960, so a small state can lead a big one. Counted from Social Security card applications.

Who has this name today

  • White alone (non-Hispanic) — 71.6%
  • Black or African American alone (non-Hispanic) — 12.8%
  • Hispanic or Latino origin — 6.2%
  • Two or more races — 3.0%
  • Asian and Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander alone — 5.4%
  • American Indian and Alaska Native alone — 1.0%

Categories are how people answered the census — a fact about the bearers, not a property of the name. Conclusions are ours, not the Census Bureau’s.

This name in other languages

  • Allan English
  • Helier French

Forms of one name traced to the same root. Spellings are as the glossary printed them, so some look older than the versions in use today.

How to spell Allen

Allen is how 71% of them spell it — 236,595 people answer to the sound.

Each spelling is its own census entry — the counts never overlap, so the shares are of the group, not of the country.

Names about as common

The nearest entries above and below by number of people.

Try it Compare Two Names

Put another name beside this one.

One of those is not in the census file.

Open Compare Two Names on its own page

Where this page gets its numbers

  • Counts, ranks and shares: U.S. Census Bureau, 2020 Census tabulations of first and last names occurring 100 or more times. Percentages, bands and groupings are our own arithmetic — the conclusions are ours, not the Bureau’s.
  • Pronunciation, syllables and rhyme groups: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, Carnegie Mellon University. The plain-English respelling is ours.
  • Origins and the forms a name takes in other languages: Charlotte Yonge, History of Christian Names, 1884 — a public-domain work. Scholarship has moved on since, so read it as one reading of a name, not the last word.

Below a hundred people we publish no figure at all — the same threshold the Census Bureau applies to us. What each source covers
Other names of Latin origin