Alpha

Where Alpha comes from

Alpha hasn't made it into the dictionaries we draw on, and nobody well known enough for an encyclopedia has carried it yet — so for now its story is the one the SSA record tells. Names that spell a familiar sound a new way often live here for a while before anyone writes them down.

  • Vowel-ended
Along the way
  1. 1880
    First SSA year
    Already #309 among girls — 26 babies in the first year on record.
  2. 1881
    Peak, #301
    27 babies named Alpha — more than any year before or since.
  3. 1938
    Alpha Condé born
    President of Guinea from 2010 to 2021
  4. 1946
    Alpha Oumar Konaré born
    President of Mali (1992 to 2002)
  5. 1964
    The fade
    The first year with half the peak's births — down to #4,355.
  6. 1998
    Mostly boys from here
    Until now more girls than boys got the name; from this year it's the other way round, and has stayed that way.
In the dictionary

No dictionary entry for this spelling — which is its own kind of rare.

Namesakes
  • Alpha Condé · President of Guinea from 2010 to 2021, born 1938
  • Alpha Oumar Konaré · President of Mali (1992 to 2002), born 1946
  • Alpha Oumar Djalo · French judoka, born 1996
  • Alpha Kaba · French basketball player, born 1996
  • Alpha Barry · politician from Burkina Faso, born 1970

Sources: the origin note and dictionary entry are quoted from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 4.0); the namesakes come from Wikidata (CC0); the milestones are worked out from the SSA record.