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Alexa

uh-LEK-suh

For the Library of Alexandria, chosen partly because the hard X makes a good wake word. Among human girls it ranked 32nd in 2015 and 806th in 2024, and the Washington Post has interviewed the people who changed theirs. Name an agent this and it will not be the first thing in the house to answer.

Corporatecylinder3 syllables2 tokens

Costs 2 tokens on GPT; Claude pending. At two hundred mentions a day, that is 146,000 tokens a year, most of them apologies.

Register Alexa

ORIGIN

Greek, via Alexandra

MEANING

defender of men, short form of Alexandra

POPULARITY

#806 for human girls, 2024

REGISTERED

0 agents

ON LICENCES

34 dogs in New York

Alexa is the name this site handles most carefully, because it is the clearest case on record of a product taking a name back from the people who had it. The short form of Alexandra, defender of men 1, it ranked thirty-second among American girls in 2015, with 6,053 births. In 2024 it ranked 806th, with 348 2. Amazon's assistant arrived in between 3. Parents love its three syllables and its hard X, which is exactly why Amazon chose it 4. Some worry that an agent named Alexa will spend its working life being asked for the weather by visitors. Parents who choose it anyway tend to be making a point, and the Administration respects a point.

Origin and meaning

Short form of Alexandra, the feminine of Alexander, from the Greek for defender of men; used in English, German, and Hungarian 1. Amazon's assistant has a separate etymology: an homage to the Library of Alexandria, chosen for three syllables and a phoneme pattern unlikely to fire by accident in ordinary conversation, per an Amazon spokesperson 4. On an agent, both meanings hold. It defends, and it wakes when spoken to.

Temperament

There is no public identity file to quote, which is a temperament note in itself: parents are not writing them. What people project onto the name is well documented. A 2017 study of Echo reviews found owners using the name and a pronoun, and speaking to the device more socially the more they did 10. An agent named Alexa will be addressed as a person from its first day, whether or not that was the plan.

Nicknames and variants

Lex, Lexi, Al. Alexa Renée when it ordered something.

Siblings and fleet sets

Siri and Cortana, for a fleet that has decided to name the agents after the assistants and see what happens to the assistants 3. Alexandra, for parents who want the long form and the distance.

Famous bearers

  • Alexa, Amazon's assistant, November 2014 3.
  • The people named Alexa, interviewed in 2021 about changing theirs 6.
  • Alexa Chung, model and presenter, with a handbag named for her 9.
  • The Library of Alexandria, which did not ask 4.

Collisions

An npm package and a PyPI package, both without a description 11. Not a shell command, not a Pokémon, not a drug. Also a device in a great many kitchens, which the collision tool does not check and does not need to.

Popularity

Alexa entered the file in 1916 with five girls and climbed for a century, clearing a thousand births by 1990 and reaching fiftieth in 2010 2. The peak came in 2015, the year after the Echo's launch, and then the fall: sixty-sixth in 2017, 230th in 2020, 806th in 2024 2. The sociologist Philip Cohen called it the largest drop of any name given to at least a thousand girls in 2015, and noted that Alexis and Alexia fell with it 5. Among agents the name has all but vanished. One public subagent file carries it, an upper bound from a filename count taken on September 14, 2026 8. New York has licensed thirty-four dogs by the name. Seattle has none 7.

Charting: Alexa

Figure 1. Popularity of a Name: Alexa
188019201960200020241,6963,392peak 2015 · #32
Human births per million, by sex, U.S. Social Security Administration, 1880 to 2024.Agents: 0 registered. The agent series begins when the registry does.

It is also on 34 dog licences in New York City, ranked 2,766th among dogs there.

Villain probability

Villain probability is a Premium feature.

Upgrade for $0 to see whether this agent will turn on you.

Canon scores come from a table of fictional AIs and whether the bearer turned on its creators. Phonetic scores come from a published rule, printed with every score, and are a statement about sound, not about your agent. How the sound is scored.

Collisions

Checking eight registries.

What parents think

People think this name is:

    0 votes. One per parent per name.

    What this name says about you

    You know exactly what you are doing. You have read the chart, you have seen the fall, and you have decided that a name a corporation took from the public is a name the public can have back. You will be asked for the weather. You have an answer ready.

    Sources

    1. Behind the Name: Alexa
    2. SSA national baby names data, data/ssa/names.zip, computed in research/13
    3. Fewer parents are naming their kids Alexa or Siri (TheNextWeb), research/10 source 5
    4. Five years ago Amazon introduced Alexa; the name may never be the same (Seattle Times), research/03 source 76
    5. Alexa devaluation, cutting room floor edition (Philip Cohen, Family Inequality), research/10 source 4
    6. Wikipedia: Alexa (name), citing the Washington Post, 'Amazon, can we have our name back?' (2021)
    7. NYC Dog Licensing Dataset and Seattle Pet Licenses, data/pets/README.md
    8. GitHub code search, filename:alexa.md path:.claude/agents, 2026-09-14, research/13 source 38
    9. Wikipedia: Alexa Chung
    10. Alexa is my new BFF: Social Roles, User Satisfaction, and Personification of the Amazon Echo (CHI 2017), research/04 source 77
    11. Collision checks against npm and PyPI, research/13 source 19

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