Barry
Barry reached its high-water mark in 1962 at number 61, and has been recorded 182,036 times in all. In 2025 it ranked 1,520th. About 127,000 Barrys are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 64.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Barry boys named Barry
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 182,036
- Estimated living today
- 127,000
- Median age today
- 64
- Peak year
- 1962
- Best rank
- 61st
- Rank in 2025
- 1,520th
- First recorded
- 1883
- Girls / boys
- 766 / 181,270
How old the living Barrys are
born that year still alive today
Of the 182,036 babies given the name since 1883, about 127,000 are alive — 70 in every hundred. Roughly 2,300 of them are children and 60,000 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1961 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 Irish
Anglicized form of Irish Bairre, short form of Fionnbharr, from fionn (“white”) + barr (“head”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Barrys
- Karl Barry Sharpless (born 1941)American chemist and Nobel Laureate
- Barry Marshall (born 1951)Nobel Prize winner, and Professor of Clinical Microbiology
- Barry C. Barish (born 1936)American physicist
- John Barry (1933–2011)British composer and conductor
- Barry Bostwick (born 1945)American actor
- Barry Levinson (born 1942)American screenwriter, film director, actor, and producer
- Barry White (1944–2003)American soul singer
- Barry Goldwater (1909–1998)American politician and military officer
People named Barry with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Barry is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Barry is most concentrated in Pennsylvania (2.1×), Kentucky (1.6×), Virginia (1.5×), Maine (1.5×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1962
The most popular boys’ names the year Barry peaked:
Barry elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ireland boys | Barry | 8,728 | 17th |
| Scotland boys | Barry | 6,095 | 20th |
| New Zealand boys | Barry | 3,624 | 24th |
| England and Wales boys | Barry | 449 | 441st |
| Northern Ireland boys | Barry | 184 | 90th |
| France boys | Barry | 165 | 2,684th |
| Belgium boys | Barry | 5 | 1,016th |
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.
Barry 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| the Netherlands boys | Barry | 4,094 | 4,482 |
| the Netherlands girls | Barry | 14 | 46 |
| Finland boys | Barry | 17 | 26 |
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 Barry lives in Spain
Not a count of births but of people: 293 men called Barry were living in Spain on 1 January 2025, of every age, born in any year. Where they live is not spread evenly.
Men: the provinces where it is densest
| Province | Spelling | People | Per thousand | Place there |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alicante/Alacant | Barry | 81 | 0.081 | 913 |
| Málaga | Barry | 50 | 0.057 | 973 |
| Almería | Barry | 18 | 0.046 | 1,294 |
| Palmas, Las | Barry | 16 | 0.028 | 2,585 |
| Santa Cruz de Tenerife | Barry | 14 | 0.026 | 2,686 |
| Balears, Illes | Barry | 13 | 0.021 | 2,520 |
Listed in 11 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 41 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
Barry 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.