Billy
The boy's name Billy has been in the national records since 1880, with 389,665 births to its name. In 2025 it ranked 1,068th. About 195,000 Billys are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 63.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Billy boys named Billy
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 389,665
- Estimated living today
- 195,000
- Median age today
- 63
- Peak year
- 1934
- Best rank
- 20th
- Rank in 2025
- 1,068th
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 5,432 / 384,233
How old the living Billys are
born that year still alive today
Of the 389,665 babies given the name since 1880, about 195,000 are alive — 50 in every hundred. Roughly 5,300 of them are children and 88,000 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1962 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
Diminutive and pet-form;.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Billys
- Billy Graham (1918–2018)American Baptist evangelist
- Billy Wilder (1906–2002)Austrian and American filmmaker
- Billy the Kid (1859–1881)American outlaw and gunfighter
- Billy Joel (born 1949)American singer, songwriter, and pianist
- Billy Connolly (born 1942)Scottish actor and comedian
- Billy Bob Thornton (born 1955)American actor, filmmaker, and musician
- Billy Crystal (born 1948)American actor, comedian, writer, producer, director and television presenter
- Billy Zane (born 1966)American actor
People named Billy with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Billy is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Billy is most concentrated in Arkansas (5.0×), Oklahoma (4.5×), Tennessee (3.4×), Mississippi (3.3×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1934
The most popular boys’ names the year Billy peaked:
Billy elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| England and Wales boys | Billy | 19,089 | 71st |
| France boys | Billy | 2,820 | 321st |
| Ireland boys | Billy | 2,089 | 49th |
| Scotland boys | Billy | 1,097 | 117th |
| Belgium boys | Billy | 270 | 589th |
| Northern Ireland boys | Billy | 217 | 169th |
| Switzerland boys | Billy | 60 | 957th |
| France girls | Billy | 50 | 2,701st |
| New Zealand boys | Billy | 50 | 86th |
| England and Wales girls | Billy | 23 | 2,407th |
| Poland boys | Billy | 2 birth registrations | 705th |
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.
Billy: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German boys | Switzerland | Billy | 24 | 0.002% | 678th |
| French boys | Switzerland | Billy | 36 | 0.008% | 351st |
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.
Billy: rank by region
In 2025, Billy was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Billy | 642 | 8 |
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.
Billy by city
| City | Years | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin boys | 2017–2023 | 2 | 584th |
One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.
Billy 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 | Billy | 39 | 53 |
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
Billy 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.