Woody
Woody reached its high-water mark in 1946 at number 599, and has been recorded 4,246 times in all. In 2025 it ranked 7,679th. About 2,600 Woodys are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 60.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Woody boys named Woody
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 4,246
- Estimated living today
- 2,600
- Median age today
- 60
- Peak year
- 1946
- Best rank
- 599th
- Rank in 2025
- 7,679th
- First recorded
- 1882
- Girls / boys
- 10 / 4,236
How old the living Woodys are
born that year still alive today
Of the 4,246 babies given the name since 1882, about 2,600 are alive — 62 in every hundred. Roughly 180 of them are children and 1,100 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1965 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 Woodys
- Woody Allen (born 1935)American filmmaker, actor and comedian
- Woody Harrelson (born 1961)American actor
- Woody Guthrie (1912–1967)American singer-songwriter
- Woody Herman (1913–1987)American jazz musician and bandleader
- Woody Strode (1914–1994)American athlete and actor
- Woody Shaw (1944–1989)American musician
- Woody Johnson (born 1947)American businessman, ambassador
- Woody Sauldsberry (1934–2007)American basketball player
People named Woody with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Woody is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Woody is most concentrated in North Carolina (5.3×), Texas (3.7×), Tennessee (3.2×), Oklahoma (3.1×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1946
The most popular boys’ names the year Woody peaked:
Woody elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| England and Wales boys | Woody | 2,054 | 347th |
| France boys | Woody | 155 | 1,513th |
| Scotland boys | Woody | 68 | 433rd |
| Ireland boys | Woody | 7 | 631st |
| Northern Ireland boys | Woody | 3 | 398th |
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.
Related names
Woody 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.