Bailey
Bailey is a girl's name that peaked in 1998, when it was the 60th most popular in the United States. It is given to both boys and girls. In 2025 it ranked 208th. About 129,000 Baileys are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 22.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Bailey boys named Bailey
Girls and boys called Bailey
years more girls than boys years more boys than girls
Bailey crossed from boys to girls in 1980, and has stayed there for 46 of the years counted since. At its furthest it was 97% girls, and in 2025 it was 91%.
The girls’ share of each year’s babies of the name, in the 95 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
- 132,544
- Estimated living today
- 129,000
- Median age today
- 22
- Peak year
- 1998
- Best rank
- 60th
- Rank in 2025
- 208th
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 110,806 / 21,738
How old the living Baileys are
born that year still alive today
Of the 132,544 babies given the name since 1880, about 129,000 are alive — 97 in every hundred. Roughly 48,000 of them are children and 400 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 2003 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
See bailey (“outer castle wall”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Baileys
- Bailey Jay (born 1988)American pornographic actress
- Bailey Wright (born 1992)Australian association football player
- Thomas Bailey Aldrich (1836–1907)American poet, novelist, editor
- Bailey Peacock-Farrell (born 1996)Northern Irish association football player
- Bailey Olter (1932–1999)President of Federated States of Micronesia
- Bailey Chase (born 1972)American actor
- Bailey Howell (born 1937)American basketball player
- Michael Bailey Smith (born 1957)American actor
People named Bailey with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Bailey is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Bailey is most concentrated in Utah (2.2×), Idaho (2.1×), Nevada (2.1×), Wyoming (2.0×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1998
The most popular girls’ names the year Bailey peaked:
Bailey elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| England and Wales boys | Bailey | 16,192 | 70th |
| England and Wales girls | Bailey | 2,158 | 337th |
| New Zealand boys | Bailey | 1,304 | 30th |
| Scotland boys | Bailey | 978 | 96th |
| Northern Ireland boys | Bailey | 423 | 90th |
| Scotland girls | Bailey | 360 | 174th |
| Ireland boys | Bailey | 186 | 232nd |
| New Zealand girls | Bailey | 150 | 79th |
| Ireland girls | Bailey | 145 | 296th |
| Northern Ireland girls | Bailey | 32 | 273rd |
| Switzerland girls | Bailey | 17 | 1,428th |
| France girls | Bailey | 10 | 6,733rd |
| Belgium girls | Bailey | 5 | 1,353rd |
| France boys | Bailey | 5 | 3,445th |
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.
Bailey: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German girls | Switzerland | Bailey | 17 | 0.001% | 1,126th |
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.
Bailey: rank by region
In 2020, Bailey was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Bailey | 839 | 5 |
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children – 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.
Bailey 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.
| Country | Spelling | First forename | Any forename |
|---|---|---|---|
| Finland boys | Bailey | 8 | 17 |
| Finland girls | Bailey | 6 | 8 |
A count of people on a register – 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.
Related names
Bailey against another name
Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.
Try it on yourself
Source: US Social Security Administration, national and state baby-name files, 1880–2025. Counts include only births registered with the SSA, and names with fewer than five births in a year are not published. The living estimate applies SSA cohort life tables to those births; it counts people born in the United States, so it misses anyone who arrived later and anyone who has left.