Murphy
About 13,174 American babies have been named Murphy since 1881, most of them around 2025. It is given to both boys and girls. In 2025 it ranked 754th. About 10,000 Murphys are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 7.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Murphy boys named Murphy
Girls and boys called Murphy
years more girls than boys years more boys than girls
Murphy crossed from boys to girls in 2020, and has stayed there for 6 of the years counted since. At its furthest it was 70% girls, which is roughly where it still is.
The girls’ share of each year’s babies of the name, in the 112 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
- 13,174
- Estimated living today
- 10,000
- Median age today
- 7
- Peak year
- 2025
- Best rank
- 754th
- Rank in 2025
- 754th
- First recorded
- 1881
- Girls / boys
- 4,688 / 8,486
How old the living Murphys are
born that year still alive today
Of the 13,174 babies given the name since 1881, about 10,000 are alive — 79 in every hundred. Roughly 7,100 of them are children and 790 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 2018 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
From Irish Ó Murchadha (“descendant of Murrough”), Mac Murchaidh (“Son of Murrough”), etc. See Muircath.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Murphys
- Murphy Jensen (born 1968)US tennis player
- Murphy Troy (born 1989)US volleyball player
- Murphy J. Foster (1930–2020)American politician
- Murphy Pakiam (born 1938)Catholic archbishop
- Murphy J. Foster (1849–1921)American politician and entrepreneur
People named Murphy with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Murphy is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Murphy is most concentrated in Louisiana (10.9×), Montana (1.6×), Utah (1.6×), North Carolina (1.6×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 2025
The most popular boys’ names the year Murphy peaked:
Murphy elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| England and Wales boys | Murphy | 636 | 535th |
| England and Wales girls | Murphy | 226 | 705th |
| France boys | Murphy | 130 | 1,504th |
| France girls | Murphy | 40 | 2,558th |
| Scotland boys | Murphy | 31 | 478th |
| Switzerland girls | Murphy | 7 | 1,540th |
| Scotland girls | Murphy | 7 | 632nd |
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.
Murphy: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German girls | Switzerland | Murphy | 2 | 0.000% | 1,521st |
| French girls | Switzerland | Murphy | 5 | 0.001% | 859th |
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.
Related names
Murphy 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.