Alexa is a female form of Alex. It is variously a given name in its own right or a short form of Alexandra, both of which come from the Greek name Alexandros. It can be broken down into alexo meaning "to defend" and ander meaning "man", making Alexa mean "defender" and Alexandra "defender of man". The similarly-spelled name Aleksa is a South Slavic masculine name.

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In the United States, the name Alexa first appeared on the chart of the top 1,000 most popular baby girl names in the year 1973. It stayed in the lower ranks of the top 1000 until 1986 when it jumped from number 815 to number 431. Popularity continued to climb and Alexa was ranked in the top 100 in the mid-1990s. According to the Social Security Administration, its highest popularity, 39th, was achieved in 2006.^[1] The name's popularity decreased rapidly after Amazon picked it as the wake word of its voice service Amazon Alexa, which was released worldwide in 2016.^[2]