Jody
About 87,407 American babies have been named Jody since 1910, most of them around 1958. It is given to both boys and girls. In 2025 it ranked 6,838th. About 76,000 Jodys are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 55.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Jody boys named Jody
Girls and boys called Jody
years more girls than boys years more boys than girls
Jody crossed from girls to boys in 1994, and has stayed there for 32 of the years counted since. At its furthest it was 77% boys, and in 2025 it was 71%.
The girls’ share of each year’s babies of the name, in the 94 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
- 87,407
- Estimated living today
- 76,000
- Median age today
- 55
- Peak year
- 1958
- Best rank
- 170th
- Rank in 2025
- 6,838th
- First recorded
- 1910
- Girls / boys
- 55,845 / 31,562
How old the living Jodys are
born that year still alive today
Of the 87,407 babies given the name since 1910, about 76,000 are alive — 87 in every hundred. Roughly 1,400 of them are children and 17,000 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1970 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 Hebrew
Variant of Judy, diminutive of Judith, q.v.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Jodys
- Jody Williams (born 1950)American teacher and aid worker
- Jody Scheckter (born 1950)South African racecar driver
- Jody Lukoki (1992–2022)Dutch footballer
- Jody Watley (born 1959)American singer
- Jody Craddock (born 1975)English footballer
- Jody Hice (born 1960)American politician and radio host
- Jody February (born 1996)South African association football player
- Jody Wilson-Raybould (born 1971)Canadian politician, served as Minister of Justice, Attorney General, and Minister of Veterans Affairs
People named Jody with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Jody is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Jody is most concentrated in South Dakota (2.4×), Minnesota (2.3×), Montana (2.2×), Iowa (2.2×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1958
The most popular girls’ names the year Jody peaked:
Jody elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| France girls | Jody | 645 | 643rd |
| England and Wales girls | Jody | 531 | 466th |
| England and Wales boys | Jody | 369 | 912th |
| Scotland girls | Jody | 292 | 219th |
| France boys | Jody | 265 | 1,006th |
| Belgium girls | Jody | 150 | 472nd |
| Ireland boys | Jody | 128 | 246th |
| Scotland boys | Jody | 88 | 156th |
| Ireland girls | Jody | 72 | 369th |
| Northern Ireland girls | Jody | 28 | 183rd |
| Northern Ireland boys | Jody | 24 | 263rd |
| Belgium boys | Jody | 17 | 932nd |
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.
Jody: rank by region
In 2010, Jody was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Jody | 772 | 6 |
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.
Jody 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 girls | Jody | 6 | 6 |
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
Jody 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.