Alan Family Name and Heraldry

Arms linked to Allen and its spellings were granted to individual families; our heraldry team traces which line they belonged to.

Family name meaning

Alan is how some branches of the Allen family came to write their name. Its meaning, shared with Allen, is “From the given name Alan”.

Before spelling was fixed, Allen was also written Alan. The same family of names includes Allan, Allin and Alleyne. The 2010 US Census counted 1,423 people named Alan, ranking it number 19,114 among American surnames. It sits within the 25,000 most common last names in the country. INSEE counts 179 people born in France with the Alan surname between 1891 and 2000; the busiest decade was 1991–2000.

Get the complete Alan report, with a museum-style coat of arms.