Sidney
About 108,987 American babies have been named Sidney since 1880, most of them around 1918. It is given to both boys and girls. In 2025 it ranked 1,323rd. About 55,000 Sidneys are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 35.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Sidney boys named Sidney
Girls and boys called Sidney
years more girls than boys years more boys than girls
Sidney crossed from boys to girls in 1993, and has stayed there for 27 of the years counted since. At its furthest it was 79% girls, and in 2025 it was 42%.
The girls’ share of each year’s babies of the name, in the 146 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
- 108,987
- Estimated living today
- 55,000
- Median age today
- 35
- Peak year
- 1918
- Best rank
- 94th
- Rank in 2025
- 1,323rd
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 24,785 / 84,202
How old the living Sidneys are
born that year still alive today
Of the 108,987 babies given the name since 1880, about 55,000 are alive — 51 in every hundred. Roughly 8,200 of them are children and 14,000 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1990 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 Old English *Sīdaneġ, the name of a place in Surrey, from sīd (“wide”) + eġ (“island”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Sidneys
- Sidney Poitier (1927–2022)Bahamian and American actor and diplomat
- Sidney Lumet (1924–2011)American director, producer and screenwriter
- Sidney Sheldon (1917–2007)American writer
- Sidney Altman (1939–2022)Canadian American molecular biologist
- Sidney Govou (born 1979)French footballer
- Sidney Crosby (born 1987)Canadian ice hockey player
- Sidney Sonnino (1847–1922)Italian politician
- Sidney Bechet (1897–1959)American jazz musician
People named Sidney with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Sidney is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Sidney is most concentrated in Louisiana (3.1×), Mississippi (2.4×), Alabama (1.7×), New York (1.6×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1918
The most popular boys’ names the year Sidney peaked:
Sidney elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| England and Wales boys | Sidney | 5,048 | 168th |
| France boys | Sidney | 1,530 | 471st |
| France girls | Sidney | 945 | 605th |
| England and Wales girls | Sidney | 436 | 906th |
| Belgium girls | Sidney | 144 | 444th |
| Belgium boys | Sidney | 78 | 683rd |
| Scotland boys | Sidney | 41 | 333rd |
| Ireland boys | Sidney | 23 | 290th |
| Ireland girls | Sidney | 3 | 677th |
| Northern Ireland boys | Sidney | 3 | 404th |
| Scotland girls | Sidney | 3 | 780th |
| Poland boys | Sidney | 2 birth registrations | 663rd |
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.
Sidney: rank by region
In 2006, Sidney was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wallonia | Sidney | 438 | 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.
Sidney 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 | Sidney | 8 | 24 |
| Finland girls | Sidney | — | 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
Sidney 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.