Alex written in the Greek script, with pronunciation, a letter-by-letter breakdown, and the story behind the name.
Each Greek letter below maps to part of the name.
Alex is a short form of Alexander — in Greek, Αλέξανδρος (Aléxandros), from aléxein "to defend" and anér/andrós "man": "defender of the people." Like Sophia, this name is coming home when written in Greek — it was Greek to begin with, made famous by Alexander the Great.
Greek has a single letter, ξ (xi), for the ks sound that English spells with x — so Alex needs only four Greek letters. Greek men named Αλέξανδρος routinely go by Αλέξης or Άλεξ, exactly parallel to the English nickname.
Alex is written Άλεξ: alpha with a stress mark (Ά), lambda (λ), epsilon (ε), and xi (ξ). The letter ξ covers the entire ks sound, so the Greek spelling is one letter shorter than the English one.
Αλέξανδρος (Alexander) for men and Αλεξάνδρα (Alexandra) for women. The name is originally Greek — aléxein "to defend" plus andrós "man" — and Alexander the Great carried it across the ancient world. Άλεξ works as a nickname for either.
AH-lex, stressed on the first syllable as the tonos shows. It sounds close to the English pronunciation, though the Greek ε is a crisper, shorter e than the English one. The related nickname Αλέξης is pronounced ah-LEK-sees.