Ashley

Popularity, 1880–2025

girls named Ashley boys named Ashley

Girls and boys called Ashley

years more girls than boys years more boys than girls

Ashley crossed from boys to girls in 1964, and has stayed there for 62 of the years counted since. At its furthest it was 100% girls, which is roughly where it still is.

The girls’ share of each year’s babies of the name, in the 112 years in which at least 25 babies got it. The line touches the middle more often than there are crossings marked: a year or two on the other side is not a name changing hands, and only a move that holds for 5 counted years and reaches 60/40 is recorded as one. All 581 names that changed sex.

By the numbers

Total US births

875,722

Estimated living today

853,000

Median age today

34

Peak year

1987

Best rank

2nd

Rank in 2025

164th

First recorded

1880

Girls / boys

859,857 / 15,865

How old the living Ashleys are

born that year still alive today

Of the 875,722 babies given the name since 1880, about 853,000 are alive — 97 in every hundred. Roughly 66,000 of them are children and 1,100 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1991 and half after.

An estimate, not a count. SSA births aged forward through SSA cohort life tables, which know nothing about who left the country or arrived in it — so for a name that mostly came to America rather than being born in it, this is a floor rather than a figure. Where you fall among living Americans.

Where the name comes from

Origin a surname

From Old English *Æsċlēah, composed of æsċ (“ash tree”) + lēah (“wood, clearing”). Equivalent.

Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Notable Ashleys

• Ashley Cole (born 1980)English association football player
• Ashley Tisdale (born 1985)American actress and singer
• Ashley Young (born 1985)English association football player
• Ashley Judd (born 1968)American actress
• Ashley Greene (born 1987)American actress
• Ashley Benson (born 1989)American actress
• Ashley Williams (born 1984)Welsh association football player
• Ashley Olsen (born 1986)American businesswoman, fashion designer and actress

People named Ashley with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).

Where Ashley is most common

• CA98,890
• TX80,004
• NY49,997
• FL47,466
• OH37,169
• IL35,584
• PA34,151
• GA29,592
• NC29,173
• MI29,018

Relative to how many babies each state records, Ashley is most concentrated in Nevada (1.7×), Florida (1.6×), Alaska (1.4×), Delaware (1.3×).

Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.

Names of 1987

The most popular girls’ names the year Ashley peaked:

• Jessica
• Ashley
• Amanda
• Jennifer
• Sarah
• Stephanie

All the names of 1987

Ashley elsewhere

Counts come from each country's own records and are not comparable with the US figures above, which cover different years and a different definition of a recorded name. Where a country writes the name several ways, the spellings are added together and the most common is shown. A row marked name registrations is counting something else: Portugal ranks each of a child's two given names separately, so a girl registered Maria Leonor is in both the Maria row and the Leonor row, and that figure is not a number of children.

Ashley: births by region

Parts of a country counted above, not extra births. The share is what makes the regions comparable: they differ in size by a factor of three hundred.

By canton, Ashley is most concentrated in Valais, where 0.04% of children were given it – 30 of them.

Ashley: rank by region

In 2024, Ashley was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.

In 2019, Ashley was among the 10 most common names in 1 region of Italy.

In 2019, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Ashley appears in the lists for Province of Hainaut (176th) and Province of East Flanders (237th).

Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children, Italy after 10 names – and published nothing after. So a region missing here is one where the name fell outside what was published, not one where it went unused. Places are shared where names tie, and the further down a list a place is, the more names can share it.

Ashley by city

One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.

Ashley among the living

How many people each country's register counts under the name, rather than how many were given it in any one year. Each register was read on one date, and they are not the same date.

A count of people on a register – the Netherlands on 1 January 2018, Finland on 4 August 2026 – and not of births, so it cannot be compared with the figures above. Names with very few bearers are withheld, and a dash in the first-forename column means the register would not say rather than that nobody goes by it.

Where Ashley lives in Spain

Not a count of births but of people: 1,614 women called Ashley were living in Spain on 1 January 2025, of every age, born in any year. Where they live is not spread evenly.

Women: the provinces where it is densest

Listed in 43 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 9 it is either held by fewer than 5 people – the point below which the source withholds a name – or it fell past the 5,000 names the source will print for one province. Neither means nobody there is called it. The rate is the source's own, not a share worked out here.

Related names

• Asher
• Ashton
• Ashlyn
• Ashlee
• Ashleigh
• Ashlynn
• Ashanti
• Ashly
• Ashlie
• Asha
• Ashtyn
• Ashely

Ashley against another name

Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.

• Ashley vs Asher
• Ashley vs Ashton
• Ashley vs Ashlyn
• Ashley vs Ashlee
• Ashley vs Ashleigh
• Ashley vs Ashlynn

Compare Ashley with a name of your own