Finley
About 42,288 American babies have been named Finley since 1880, most of them around 2017. It is given to both boys and girls. In 2025 it ranked 415th. About 41,000 Finleys are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 8.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Finley boys named Finley
Girls and boys called Finley
years more girls than boys years more boys than girls
Finley crossed from boys to girls in 2004, and has stayed there for 19 of the years counted since. At its furthest it was 66% girls, and in 2025 it was 43%.
The girls’ share of each year’s babies of the name, in the 55 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
- 42,288
- Estimated living today
- 41,000
- Median age today
- 8
- Peak year
- 2017
- Best rank
- 159th
- Rank in 2025
- 415th
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 22,908 / 19,380
How old the living Finleys are
born that year still alive today
Of the 42,288 babies given the name since 1880, about 41,000 are alive — 96 in every hundred. Roughly 38,000 of them are children and 310 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 2017 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 a surname
Variant of Finlay.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Where Finley is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Finley is most concentrated in Montana (2.6×), Oregon (2.4×), Colorado (2.3×), Idaho (2.1×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 2017
The most popular girls’ names the year Finley peaked:
Finley elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| England and Wales boys | Finley | 44,143 | 16th |
| Scotland boys | Finley | 756 | 88th |
| Ireland boys | Finley | 327 | 136th |
| Northern Ireland boys | Finley | 263 | 100th |
| England and Wales girls | Finley | 230 | 998th |
| Switzerland boys | Finley | 149 | 624th |
| New Zealand boys | Finley | 58 | 81st |
| France boys | Finley | 40 | 4,006th |
| Poland boys | Finley | 17 birth registrations | 588th |
| Belgium boys | Finley | 11 | 1,199th |
| Scotland girls | Finley | 6 | 664th |
| Ireland girls | Finley | 3 | 873rd |
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.
Finley: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German boys | Switzerland | Finley | 130 | 0.010% | 443rd |
| French boys | Switzerland | Finley | 19 | 0.004% | 528th |
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.
By canton, Finley is most concentrated in Zurich, where 0.01% of children were given it – 44 of them.
Finley: rank by region
In 2025, Finley was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Finley | 806 | 6 |
In 2023, Finley was given 2 times or more in 1 region of Poland.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Małopolskie | Finley | 206 | 3 |
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children, Poland below 2 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.
Finley by city
| City | Years | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin boys | 2017–2023 | 56 | 233rd |
One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.
Finley 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 | Finley | 20 | 31 |
| Finland girls | Finley | — | 5 |
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
Finley 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.