Ivy
About 86,173 American babies have been named Ivy since 1880, most of them around 2024. In 2025 it ranked 39th. About 77,000 Ivys are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 9.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Ivy boys named Ivy
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 86,173
- Estimated living today
- 77,000
- Median age today
- 9
- Peak year
- 2024
- Best rank
- 36th
- Rank in 2025
- 39th
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 82,713 / 3,460
How old the living Ivys are
born that year still alive today
Of the 86,173 babies given the name since 1880, about 77,000 are alive — 90 in every hundred. Roughly 54,000 of them are children and 3,400 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 2016 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
From ivy, the name of a plant. An ivy branch used to be hung outside an establishment to advertise that it sold alcohol, so it may originally been an occupationational surname for the proprietor of such an establishment.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Ivys
- Ivy Matsepe-Casaburri (1937–2009)South African politician
- Ivy Compton-Burnett (1884–1969)English writer
- Blue Ivy Carter (born 2012)American singer and actress
- Ivy Queen (born 1972)Puerto Rican rapper, singer and actress
- Ivy Dumont (born 1930)Governor-General of the Bahamas
- Ivy Lee (1877–1934)American businessman
- Ivy Ling Po (born 1939)Hong Kong actress and singer
- Ivy Chen (born 1982)Taiwanese actress and model
People named Ivy with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Ivy is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Ivy is most concentrated in Utah (3.0×), Nevada (2.3×), Idaho (1.8×), Arizona (1.8×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 2024
The most popular girls’ names the year Ivy peaked:
Ivy elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| England and Wales girls | Ivy | 25,001 | 5th |
| Scotland girls | Ivy | 1,609 | 14th |
| France girls | Ivy +1 spelling | 1,555 | 338th |
| New Zealand girls | Ivy | 1,276 | 25th |
| Ireland girls | Ivy | 887 | 49th |
| Northern Ireland girls | Ivy | 524 | 26th |
| Switzerland girls | Ivy | 400 | 151st |
| Belgium girls | Ivy | 314 | 272nd |
| Poland girls | Ivy | 48 birth registrations | 405th |
| France boys | Ivy | 45 | 5,245th |
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.
Ivy: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German girls | Switzerland | Ivy | 263 | 0.021% | 160th |
| French girls | Switzerland | Ivy | 132 | 0.030% | 121st |
| Italian girls | Switzerland | Ivy | 5 | 0.008% | 196th |
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, Ivy is most concentrated in Zurich, where 0.03% of children were given it – 106 of them.
Ivy: rank by region
In 2025, Ivy was given 5 times or more in 3 regions of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Ivy | 350 | 15 |
| Wallonia | Ivy | 191 | 14 |
| Brussels | Ivy | 244 | 5 |
In 2021, Ivy was among the 10 most common names in 1 region of Italy.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Valle d'Aosta/Vallée d'Aoste | Ivy | 8 | 1 |
In 2023, Ivy was given 2 times or more in 2 regions of Poland.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pomorskie | Ivy | 221 | 2 |
| Warmińsko-Mazurskie | Ivy | 133 | 2 |
In 2025, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Ivy appears in the lists for Province of Liège (157th), Province of East Flanders (214th) and Brussels-Capital Region (244th).
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children, Italy after 10 names, 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.
Ivy by city
| City | Years | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin girls | 2017–2023 | 76 | 166th |
One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.
Ivy 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 girls | Ivy | 1,557 | 2,107 |
| Finland girls | Ivy | 56 | 98 |
| the Netherlands boys | Ivy | 36 | 54 |
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.
Related names
Ivy 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.