Wesley
The boy's name Wesley has been in the national records since 1880, with 250,969 births to its name. In 2025 it ranked 52nd. About 195,000 Wesleys are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 32.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Wesley boys named Wesley
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 250,969
- Estimated living today
- 195,000
- Median age today
- 32
- Peak year
- 2025
- Best rank
- 52nd
- Rank in 2025
- 52nd
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 3,256 / 247,713
How old the living Wesleys are
born that year still alive today
Of the 250,969 babies given the name since 1880, about 195,000 are alive — 78 in every hundred. Roughly 64,000 of them are children and 21,000 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1993 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
Several places in England, from Old English west (“west”) + lēah (“wood, clearing”). Equivalent.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Wesleys
- Wesley Sneijder (born 1984)Dutch association football player
- Wesley Snipes (born 1962)American actor
- Jake Wesley Rogers (born 1996)American pop musician and songwriter
- Wesley Clark (born 1944)United States Army general and 2004 Democratic Party presidential candidate
- John Wesley Powell (1834–1902)American geologist
- Wesley Fofana (born 2000)French footballer
- Wesley So (born 1993)Filipino-American chess player
- Wesley Sonck (born 1978)Belgian association football player
People named Wesley with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Wesley is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Wesley is most concentrated in Alaska (1.7×), Hawaii (1.7×), Montana (1.7×), Utah (1.6×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 2025
The most popular boys’ names the year Wesley peaked:
Wesley elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| France boys | Wesley | 5,780 | 339th |
| England and Wales boys | Wesley | 2,585 | 178th |
| Ireland boys | Wesley | 859 | 62nd |
| Belgium boys | Wesley | 742 | 155th |
| Scotland boys | Wesley | 159 | 100th |
| Switzerland boys | Wesley | 81 | 980th |
| Northern Ireland boys | Wesley | 10 | 240th |
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.
Wesley: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German boys | Switzerland | Wesley | 47 | 0.004% | 737th |
| French boys | Switzerland | Wesley | 33 | 0.008% | 422nd |
| Italian boys | Switzerland | Wesley | 1 | 0.002% | 203rd |
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.
Wesley: rank by region
In 2020, Wesley was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wallonia | Wesley | 499 | 5 |
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.
Wesley 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| the Netherlands boys | Wesley | 12,741 | 14,348 |
| the Netherlands girls | Wesley | 12 | 51 |
| Finland boys | Wesley | 20 | 44 |
A count of people on a register – the Netherlands on 1 January 2018, 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.
Where Wesley lives in Spain
Not a count of births but of people: 217 men called Wesley were living in Spain on 1 January 2025, of every age, born in any year. Where they live is not spread evenly.
Men: the provinces where it is densest
| Province | Spelling | People | Per thousand | Place there |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lugo | Wesley | 6 | 0.038 | 1,131 |
| Lleida | Wesley | 5 | 0.021 | 2,374 |
| Málaga | Wesley | 18 | 0.021 | 2,175 |
| Tarragona | Wesley | 8 | 0.018 | 2,561 |
| Girona | Wesley | 7 | 0.017 | 2,753 |
| Coruña, A | Wesley | 8 | 0.015 | 2,356 |
Listed in 13 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 39 it is either held by fewer than 5 people – the point below which the source withholds a name – or it fell past the 5,000 names the source will print for one province. Neither means nobody there is called it. The rate is the source's own, not a share worked out here.
Related names
Wesley 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.