Alice
Meaning of Alice
Alice comes from the Old French Adelais, a shortened form of the Germanic Adalheidis, which combines adal (noble) and heid (kind or type); name dictionaries agree on this derivation and usually give the meaning as noble kind or of noble sort. English speakers say AL-iss, stressing the first syllable and ending on an unstressed syllable, and the British and American pronunciations are the same.
Its best-known literary association is Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland of 1865, whose heroine is linked to Alice Liddell, the child friend of the author. Among notable bearers, Alice Walker won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for The Color Purple, and Alice Roosevelt Longworth, eldest child of Theodore Roosevelt, was a famous Washington socialite and writer.
Alice was a top-ten American name in the 1880s, ranking 8th in 1880, and it remained in the top 20 into the 1920s. It then declined for most of the century, falling to 442nd in 1995. A strong revival followed: the name reached 63rd in 2024 and stood at 65th in 2025, when 3,547 girls received it.
Pronunciation
English
- Pronunced as AL-iss (/ˈæl.ɪs/)
U.S. Popularity Chart
States Popularity Chart
Notable People Named Alice
| Alice Walker is an American novelist, poet, and activist who in 1982 became the first African American woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for The Color Purple and has published widely across novels, short stories, nonfiction, essays, and poetry. |
| Alice Roosevelt Longworth, eldest child of President Theodore Roosevelt, was an American writer and socialite known for her unconventional life, a rocky marriage to Speaker Nicholas Longworth, and a daughter from an affair with Senator William Borah. |
| Alice Liddell - Alice Pleasance Hargreaves was an English girl whose childhood friendship with Lewis Carroll helped inspire the 1865 classic Alice in Wonderland, though scholars debate how closely the heroine is based on her. |
| Alice Freeman Palmer was an American educator who led Wellesley College in the 1880s and later served as dean of women at the University of Chicago. |
| Alice Phillipot, known as Alice Rahon, was a poet and painter born in France who helped pioneer abstract expression in Mexico with surrealist innovations and exhibited widely in the mid 20th century. |
| Alice Sebold is an American author of The Lovely Bones, The Almost Moon, and the memoir Lucky, with The Lovely Bones a New York Times bestseller adapted into a 2009 film. |
| Alice Frederica Keppel was a prominent British aristocrat and society hostess, best known as the longtime mistress of King Edward VII. |
| Alice Coltrane was an American jazz musician and Hindu spiritual leader known as Swamini Turiyasangitananda or Turiya. |
| Alice Merton is a British-based German-Canadian singer-songwriter best known for No Roots, with albums Mint 2019, Sides 2022, and Visions due January 16 2026. |
| Alice Catherine Evans, a pioneering American microbiologist, showed that brucellosis spread from cattle to humans, prompting milk pasteurization, and became the first woman to lead the Society of American Bacteriologists. |
| Alice Irene Marble was an American tennis champion who won 18 Grand Slam titles from 1936 to 1940 and was world number one in 1939. |
| Alice Hoffman is an American novelist for adults, teens, and children, best known for Practical Magic and for blending magic realism with irony and unconventional love stories. |
