Buddy
The boy's name Buddy has been in the national records since 1893, with 22,585 births to its name. In 2025 it ranked 4,396th. About 11,000 Buddys are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 63.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Buddy boys named Buddy
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 22,585
- Estimated living today
- 11,000
- Median age today
- 63
- Peak year
- 1935
- Best rank
- 202nd
- Rank in 2025
- 4,396th
- First recorded
- 1893
- Girls / boys
- 45 / 22,540
How old the living Buddys are
born that year still alive today
Of the 22,585 babies given the name since 1893, about 11,000 are alive — 50 in every hundred. Roughly 520 of them are children and 5,100 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
Origin English
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Buddys
- Buddy Holly (1936–1959)American rock and roll singer
- Buddy Guy (born 1936)American blues guitarist and singer
- Buddy Rich (1917–1987)American jazz drummer and bandleader
- Buddy Hackett (1924–2003)American actor and comedian
- Buddy Ebsen (1908–2003)American actor and dancer
- Buddy Bolden (1877–1931)American cornetist and jazz pioneer
- Buddy Hield (born 1992)Bahamian basketball player
- Buddy Matthews (born 1988)Australian professional wrestler
People named Buddy with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Buddy is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Buddy is most concentrated in Oklahoma (5.4×), Arkansas (4.4×), Tennessee (3.0×), West Virginia (3.0×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1935
The most popular boys’ names the year Buddy peaked:
Buddy elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| England and Wales boys | Buddy | 1,800 | 282nd |
| Scotland boys | Buddy | 47 | 401st |
| Ireland boys | Buddy | 3 | 713th |
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
Buddy 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.