Is National Alice Day a public holiday?

No. It is an unofficial observance with no legal or governmental standing located, so March 23 is a normal working day. A day for one particular Alice does carry a proclamation: Hawaii declared February 28 Alice Augusta Ball Day in 2022.

Is Alice's name day March 23 or 23 June?

Both dates exist and they belong to different traditions. National Alice Day falls on March 23, while the Swedish almanac gives Alice 23 June, shared with Adolf, and the Finland-Swedish almanac gives it 14 July.

Is Alice more popular in Sweden than in England or the United States?

Alice ranks higher on the Swedish list than on the English or American ones, but the three cannot be lined up as a single table. Sweden ranks the tilltalsnamn, the given name a child is actually called by, while the Office for National Statistics and the Social Security Administration rank the first name as registered.

National Alice Day

Next celebratedTuesday, March 23, 2027

Lewis Carroll gets the credit for Alice and was seven centuries late: the name had been current in England since the 1100s. The day it keeps on March 23 is, by a wide margin, the newest thing about it.

See how to celebrate

Countdown to the day

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Last updated September 6, 2026 · by the Holiday Calendar TeamHave an update or spot an error?

YEARLY DATEMarch 23

OBSERVED INInternationally

CATEGORYNames

ORIGIN

Community Origin

FOUNDING ENTITY

Not documented

FIRST OBSERVED

~2022

HOW THE HOLIDAY CAME TO BE

A day traceable to one archived listing.

No founder, proclamation, registry filing or launch announcement for National Alice Day exists in any source located. Its earliest trace anywhere in the Internet Archive's record is a listing captured on 30 September 2022, which dates the day's circulation rather than its founding.

+ Know the story? Submit a founder Help us complete this holiday

INTRO

A six-year run undone by subtraction

National Alice Day belongs to a name that has just been through an odd piece of arithmetic. A six-year run at the top of Sweden's list of newborn girls' names ended in 2022, and the name that finished first barely moved.

Astrid gained seven babies, going from 596 to 603. Alice lost 154, dropping from 706 to 552. The order reversed because Alice fell, not because Astrid rose.

Statistics Sweden itself put the fall at nearly 22 percent. Astrid's winning total was 103 lower than Alice's the year before. Seven of the 2022 top ten had fewer babies than in 2021.

Behind the name sit three national registries that still count it every year. The day is by a wide margin the newest thing about it.

ORIGINS

Alice Day history

INTRODUCTION

Nine centuries separate the name from the day that now carries it. Alice reached England as Aalis, the Old French short form of Adelais, which was itself a short form of the Germanic Adalheidis.

The root elements mean noble. Etymonline glosses the Old High German Adalhaid as "nobility, of noble kind", from adal, "noble family", plus heit, "state, rank". That last element is the -hood of English.

CHAPTER 01

Carroll gets the spread, not the name

The name became popular in France and England in the 12th century and stayed among the most common names in England until the 16th century. Then it declined, and did not come back until the 1800s. In 1865 Lewis Carroll published "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland".

Sweden's Institute for Language and Folklore says the book certainly contributed to the name's spread. The book did not invent it. Alice had been current in England for roughly seven centuries by the time Carroll wrote a word of it.

CHAPTER 02

Sweden takes it furthest

Alice is first attested in Sweden in 1841. Isof records its strongest periods there as 1900 to 1929, and then 2000 onward.

The second of those runs is still going. Ann-Marie Persson, a statistician at Statistics Sweden, said of the 2021 figures: "Alice has been on the top-ten list every year since 2005 and has topped it ten times. It is without doubt the most popular girls' name of the last ten years."

CHAPTER 03

A day with no paper behind it

National Alice Day has almost none of that record. No founder, proclamation, registry filing or launch announcement for it turns up in any source located.

Its earliest trace anywhere in the Internet Archive's index is a listing captured on 30 September 2022. Of the four largest holiday-listing sites, the day appears on exactly one, and the other three carry no capture of it at all.

TIMELINE

Timeline

First recorded in Sweden

Isof dates the name's earliest Swedish attestation to this year.

Carroll publishes his Alice

"Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" appeared, and Isof says it certainly contributed to the name's spread.

Eighth among American girls

Alice ranked 8th in the first US year file on record, with 1,414 girls given the name.

The name's biggest American year

11,955 American girls were given the name, its highest raw count on record.

The day's earliest surviving trace

A holiday listing for National Alice Day was captured by the Internet Archive on 30 September.

Best US rank since 1951

Alice returned to 63rd in the United States, its highest position since 1951, when it ranked 62nd.

BY THE NUMBERS

National Alice Day by the Numbers

3,547: US girls named Alice in 2025
657: US girls named Alice in 2002
50 of 51: Top-20 US years for Alice, 1880 to 1930
2,006: Girls named Alice, England and Wales, 2015
825: Girls named Alice, England and Wales, 2025

GOOD TO KNOW

National Alice Day Around the World

Sweden

The almanac gives Alice a name day on 23 June, shared with Adolf.

Finland

The Finland-Swedish almanac places Alice on 14 July.

Orthodox and Catholic Europe

Name days began with the Catholic Church's celebration of saints on their death dates, and the custom is still alive in Orthodox and Roman Catholic countries.

Sweden in the 1800s

Name-day celebrations were in many places larger than birthday celebrations.

The Swedish royal calendar

The name days of the king, queen and crown princess are still official flag days.

GOOD TO KNOW

Alices in the record books

Alice Coachman

She took the high jump at London 1948 with a Games record of 1.68 m, the first Olympic gold won by a Black woman in any sport, and the only track and field gold an American woman won at those Games.

Alice Augusta Ball

At 23 she worked out an isolation technique for oil from the chaulmoogra tree, the first successful treatment for Hansen's disease, used on thousands of patients around the world until sulfone drugs arrived in the mid-1940s.

Alice Munro

The 2013 Nobel Prize in Literature went to her as a "master of the contemporary short story".

Alice Walker

"The Color Purple" won her the 1983 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

Alice Paul

She founded the National Woman's Party in 1916 and began picketing the White House in 1917, the first time anyone had ever protested there.

GET INVOLVED

How to Celebrate National Alice Day

Celebrate the Alice you actually know

A name day points at a person rather than a theme, so one message does the whole job. Tell her where the name came from while you are at it.

LOOK

Look up where the name stands this year

The Office for National Statistics publishes a full ranked table of girls' names in England and Wales every year. The Social Security Administration and the Swedish Tax Agency publish their own.

READ

Read an Alice who won her field's top prize

Alice Munro won the Nobel and Alice Walker the Pulitzer. Pick one of their books and start it tonight.

Share Alice Ball's story with a student

The University of Hawaii keeps its own account of her work and of the credit she was denied. It is a short read and a good one for a science class.

MARK

Mark the older name day as well

The Swedish and Finland-Swedish almanacs each already give Alice a summer date, and Isof explains where the custom came from. Add whichever one suits your family and the name gets two outings a year.

WHY THIS DAY MATTERS

Why We Love National Alice Day

OBSERVANCE

One nonprofit named its own Alice and honoured the rest.

On 23 March 2025 the nonprofit #AlyssasWishes posted that it was honouring "all the Alice's in our world", naming its own head librarian, Magical Alice Noelle. For a day that nobody runs and nothing promotes, that post is the visible proof it is marked at all.

CONTINUITY

The name never actually went away

Alice appears in every one of the 146 national year files the Social Security Administration has published, 1880 through 2025, without a single gap. A day for it is not a revival, because there was never an interruption to revive from.

DEMOGRAPHY

A falling count is not a falling name

Alice's count in England and Wales fell over the decade to 2025, and its place in the rankings fell with it. Live births in England and Wales dropped over that same decade, so the two figures cannot be read as a verdict on the name by itself.

Test your knowledge

How well do you know National Alice Day?

1 / 8

In 2022 Astrid finished ahead of Alice at the top of Sweden's list. How many more babies were named Astrid than the year before?

Answer

No. Alice was current in England from the 12th century, roughly seven centuries before Lewis Carroll's 1865 book, though Sweden's Institute for Language and Folklore says the book certainly contributed to the name's spread.

COLOPHON

Sources

How we know what’s on this page. References, not endorsements.

18sources

15primary records

13independently dated

Primary records

Statistics Sweden2023-01-31

Namn - nyfödda flickor 2022, topp 100

The 2022 Swedish top 100 for girls, with each name's 2021 count beside it.