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Girl or boy · Greek
Alexis
Say it: uh-LEK-sis
Meaning
From Greek alexis 'defence, helper', from alexein 'to defend'.
Certainscholars agree on this meaning.
A Byzantine imperial and Russian name for men, used for girls in the US since the 1980s.
Its wave through time
A fashion of the 1990s
In the United States
- 405,626 babies given this name since 1882
- At its height in 1998, about 1 in 89 girls
- 1,629 babies in 2020
Through the ages
- Ancient Greece800 BC to 146 BC
- The Early Middle Ages400 to 800
- The High and Late Middle Ages1100 to 1450
- The Modern Age1880 to today
Used by
The family of the name
Other spellings: Alexios, Alexys, Alexus
| Greek | Alexios |
|---|---|
| Russian | Aleksei |
| French | Alexis |
| Italian | Alessio |
Famous bearers
- Alexios I Komnenos, Byzantine emperor
- Alexis, Greek comic poet of the 4th century BC
- Alexis de Tocqueville, French political writer
Names worth a look
Where this comes from
- Royal and noble genealogies
- Calendars of saints and name days
- United States Social Security birth records, 1880 to today source
- Ancient Greek literature and history (Homer, Herodotus, Plutarch and others)
- Lives of the saints and early Christian martyrologies
- United States Social Security birth records, 1880 to today source
Meanings and histories are compiled from the study of names and their languages and checked by a second review.
Meanings and histories are drawn from the study of names and their languages, each with a confidence rating; popularity figures come from official birth records. Name histories are a living field: if you know of a correction, we would be glad to hear it.