Otis
Otis reached its high-water mark in 1920 at number 146, and has been recorded 61,969 times in all. In 2025 it ranked 652nd. About 26,000 Otises are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 57.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Otis boys named Otis
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 61,969
- Estimated living today
- 26,000
- Median age today
- 57
- Peak year
- 1920
- Best rank
- 146th
- Rank in 2025
- 652nd
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 887 / 61,082
How old the living Otises are
born that year still alive today
Of the 61,969 babies given the name since 1880, about 26,000 are alive — 42 in every hundred. Roughly 5,100 of them are children and 10,000 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1968 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 Germanic languages
A patronymic surname derived from Middle English genitive case of the Germanic given name Ote, Ode, cognate to modern Otto.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Otiss
- Otis Redding (1941–1967)American singer and songwriter
- Otis Davis (1932–2024)American sprinter
- Otis Rush (1935–2018)American musician
- Oliver Otis Howard (1830–1909)United States Army Medal of Honor recipient and Union Army general
- Otis Harris (born 1982)American athletics competitor
- Otis Spann (1930–1970)American Chicago blues pianist
- Otis Dozovic "El Chotis" (born 1991)American professional wrestler
- Otis Blackwell (1931–2002)American songwriter
People named Otis with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Otis is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Otis is most concentrated in Mississippi (4.9×), Alabama (3.7×), Arkansas (3.6×), Georgia (3.6×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1920
The most popular boys’ names the year Otis peaked:
Otis elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| England and Wales boys | Otis | 7,121 | 68th |
| Belgium boys | Otis | 1,998 | 25th |
| Sweden boys | Otis | 422 | 90th |
| France boys | Otis | 390 | 1,254th |
| Scotland boys | Otis | 216 | 152nd |
| New Zealand boys | Otis | 109 | 88th |
| Switzerland boys | Otis | 95 | 510th |
| Ireland boys | Otis | 77 | 306th |
| Northern Ireland boys | Otis | 54 | 239th |
| Poland boys | Otis | 5 birth registrations | 643rd |
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.
Otis: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German boys | Switzerland | Otis | 74 | 0.006% | 376th |
| French boys | Switzerland | Otis | 21 | 0.005% | 326th |
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, Otis is most concentrated in Zurich, where 0.01% of children were given it – 34 of them.
Otis: rank by region
In 2025, Otis was given 5 times or more in 3 regions of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Otis | 11 | 188 |
| Wallonia | Otis | 356 | 7 |
| Brussels | Otis | 265 | 5 |
In 2022, Otis was given 2 times or more in 1 region of Poland.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Kujawsko-Pomorskie | Otis | 184 | 2 |
In 2025, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Otis appears in the lists for Province of West Flanders (10th), Province of East Flanders (11th), Province of Flemish Brabant (13th), Province of Antwerp (14th), Province of Limburg (17th) and Brussels-Capital Region (265th).
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.
Otis by city
| City | Years | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin boys | 2017–2023 | 75 | 163rd |
One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.
Otis 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 | Otis | 14 | 21 |
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
Otis 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.