Wally
Wally reached its high-water mark in 1959 at number 575, and has been recorded 5,101 times in all. In 2025 it ranked 5,608th. About 3,000 Wallys are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 63.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Wally boys named Wally
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 5,101
- Estimated living today
- 3,000
- Median age today
- 63
- Peak year
- 1959
- Best rank
- 575th
- Rank in 2025
- 5,608th
- First recorded
- 1910
- Girls / boys
- 147 / 4,954
How old the living Wallys are
born that year still alive today
Of the 5,101 babies given the name since 1910, about 3,000 are alive — 59 in every hundred. Roughly 230 of them are children and 1,300 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1962 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.
Notable Wallys
- Wally Schirra (1923–2007)American astronaut
- Wally Pfister (born 1961)American cinematographer and film director
- Wally Funk (1939–2026)American aviator and astronaut
- Wally Ris (1924–1989)American swimmer
- Wally Hickel (1919–2010)Governor of Alaska, United States Secretary of the Interior
- Wally Szczerbiak (born 1977)American basketball player
- Wally Cox (1924–1973)American actor
- Wally Wolf (1930–1997)American swimmer
People named Wally with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Wally is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Wally is most concentrated in Idaho (3.4×), Illinois (2.8×), Washington (2.7×), California (2.6×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1959
The most popular boys’ names the year Wally peaked:
Wally elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| France boys | Wally | 280 | 1,258th |
| France girls | Wally | 15 | 1,413th |
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.
Wally by city
| City | Years | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin girls | 2017–2023 | 2 | 548th |
One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.
Related names
Wally 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.