A Slavic form of Alexios, from Greek, meaning defender or helper.
Alexei is the distinctively Russian form of Alexis, itself derived from the Greek alexein, meaning 'to defend' or 'to help' — making it a name whose essential meaning is protector. It reached Russia through the Byzantine Greek cultural inheritance that shaped Orthodox Slavic civilization, and quickly established itself among the highest registers of Russian society. The name was borne by Alexei Mikhailovich, the seventeenth-century Tsar known as 'the Quietest' — a ruler whose reign set the stage for his son Peter the Great's radical modernization of Russia — and tragically by Alexei Romanov, the hemophiliac heir to Nicholas II whose illness partly shaped the last chapter of imperial Russia.
In Russian literature and art, Alexei carries the weight of that aristocratic-imperial association while also appearing in more intimate contexts. Dostoevsky chose Alexei (Alyosha) as the name of his most spiritually pure character in The Brothers Karamazov — the gentle, devout youngest brother who embodies the novel's hope for human redemption. Tolstoy deployed it for various characters across his novels.
The name thus operates simultaneously in the registers of power and of tenderness in the Russian literary imagination. In the twenty-first century, Alexei gained global recognition through Alexei Navalny, the Russian opposition leader whose courage and tragic death made him an international symbol of democratic resistance. That association has given the name new moral weight beyond its dynastic history. Phonetically, Alexei's three syllables — the stress on the second — give it a natural elegance that has drawn parents well outside the Slavic world, drawn to its combination of classical roots and distinctive Russian character.