Diminutive of Alfred or Alfreda, from Old English 'aelf' (elf) and 'raed' (counsel). Now used independently.
Alfie is the affectionate diminutive of Alfred, a name of Old English nobility built from "ælf" (elf) and "rǣd" (counsel), yielding the poetic meaning "counsel of the elves" — elves in the Anglo-Saxon worldview being not mischievous sprites but powerful, wise supernatural beings. Alfred the Great, the ninth-century King of Wessex who unified much of England, defended against the Vikings, and championed literacy and the English language, is the name's most towering historical bearer, lending Alfred an aura of intellectual and moral seriousness. Alfie, however, took on a life quite distinct from its formal parent.
The name became associated with a cheerful, roguish working-class Englishness — crystallized by the 1966 film "Alfie," in which Michael Caine played a charming, womanizing Cockney bachelor whose breezy hedonism gradually reveals its emptiness. The film made Alfie a byword for a particular mid-century British archetype: irresistibly charismatic but emotionally evasive. The Burt Bacharach theme song cemented the name in popular memory.
In the twenty-first century, Alfie has undergone a remarkable rehabilitation in the United Kingdom, where it climbed to the top of the baby name charts in the 2000s and 2010s, embraced as a friendly, vintage alternative to more conventional names. In the US it remains rarer, retaining a slightly exotic, British-inflected charm. Prince Harry and Meghan's social circle and British celebrity culture have kept it firmly in the fashionable consciousness.