Sydney
Sydney reached its high-water mark in 2000 at number 23, and has been recorded 187,700 times in all. In 2025 it ranked 348th. About 178,000 Sydneys are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 23.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Sydney boys named Sydney
Girls and boys called Sydney
years more girls than boys years more boys than girls
Sydney crossed from boys to girls in 1940, and has stayed there for 86 of the years counted since. At its furthest it was 99% girls, which is roughly where it still is.
The girls’ share of each year’s babies of the name, in the 124 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
- 187,700
- Estimated living today
- 178,000
- Median age today
- 23
- Peak year
- 2000
- Best rank
- 23rd
- Rank in 2025
- 348th
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 178,296 / 9,404
How old the living Sydneys are
born that year still alive today
Of the 187,700 babies given the name since 1880, about 178,000 are alive — 95 in every hundred. Roughly 46,000 of them are children and 3,400 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 2002 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
For the surname and given name, see Sidney. The cities in Australia and Canada are named after British politician Thomas Townshend, 1st Viscount Sydney (1733–1800).
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Sydneys
- Sydney Sweeney (born 1997)American actress
- Sydney Pollack (1934–2008)American film director, producer and actor
- Sydney Brenner (1927–2019)South African-British biologist, Nobel prize in Physiology or Medicine 2002
- Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone (born 1999)American hurdler and sprinter
- Sydney Chapman (1888–1970)British mathematician and geophysicist
- Sydney Chaplin (1926–2009)American film and theater actor
- Sydney Chaplin (1885–1965)English actor
- Sydney Leroux (born 1990)Canadian-born American soccer player
People named Sydney with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Sydney is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Sydney is most concentrated in Nevada (1.9×), Utah (1.8×), Alaska (1.6×), Colorado (1.6×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 2000
The most popular girls’ names the year Sydney peaked:
Sydney elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| England and Wales girls | Sydney | 4,415 | 211th |
| France girls | Sydney | 1,295 | 591st |
| France boys | Sydney | 855 | 1,245th |
| England and Wales boys | Sydney | 713 | 748th |
| Belgium girls | Sydney | 133 | 523rd |
| Scotland girls | Sydney | 125 | 284th |
| Ireland girls | Sydney | 43 | 436th |
| Belgium boys | Sydney | 32 | 960th |
| Northern Ireland girls | Sydney | 6 | 407th |
| Scotland boys | Sydney | 3 | 707th |
| Poland girls | Sydney | 2 birth registrations | 714th |
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.
Sydney: rank by region
In 2008, Sydney was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wallonia | Sydney | 444 | 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.
Sydney by city
| City | Years | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin boys | 2017–2023 | 4 | 580th |
One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.
Sydney 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 | Sydney | 16 | 24 |
| Finland boys | Sydney | — | 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
Sydney 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.