Humanverse

Baily

Baily reached its high-water mark in 1997 at number 1,671, and has been recorded 1,824 times in all. It is given to both boys and girls. In 2025 it ranked 10,917th. About 1,800 Bailys are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 25.

Popularity, 1880–2025

Births per year, 1880 to 2025 0 25 50 75 100 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

girls named Baily boys named Baily

Girls and boys called Baily

Share of the name given to girls, 1880 to 2025 0% 25% 50% 75% 100% 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

years more girls than boys years more boys than girls

Both, throughout, without either side ever taking it over: 1,407 girls and 417 boys in all, and in 2012 the split was 39 to 0.

The girls’ share of each year’s babies of the name, in the 23 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
1,824
Estimated living today
1,800
Median age today
25
Peak year
1997
Best rank
1,671st
Rank in 2025
10,917th
First recorded
1984
Girls / boys
1,407 / 417

How old the living Bailys are

Born with the name each year, and how many of them are alive today, 1880 to 2025 0 40 80 120 160 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

born that year still alive today

Of the 1,824 babies given the name since 1984, about 1,800 are alive — 98 in every hundred. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 2000 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.

Notable Bailys

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

Where Baily is most common

Relative to how many babies each state records, Baily is most concentrated in Texas (2.7×), California (2.4×), New York (1.9×), Illinois (1.4×).

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

Names of 1997

The most popular girls’ names the year Baily peaked:

All the names of 1997

Baily elsewhere

CountrySpelling BirthsBest rank
England and Wales boys Baily 108 1,469th
England and Wales girls Baily 3 4,598th

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.

Related names

Baily against another name

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

Compare Baily with a name of your own

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.