Boy Names Ending In -Ley
Boys' names ending in -ley, ranked by how many babies actually got them — not by editorial preference — plus which ones are climbing and how the ending itself has moved.
- Share of boys, 2025
- 0.94%
- vs 0.66% in 2000
- Names in use
- 92
- 287 recorded since 1880
- Ending peaked
- 2014
- at 1.1% of names
- Most popular now
- Wesley
- of 92 in use
How -ley has fared since 1880
Share of all listed U.S. births given a name ending in -ley, year by year. Plotted as a share rather than a count — raw counts track how many babies were born, so every ending would appear to peak in 1957.
| Save name | Name & meaning | History 1926–2025, yearly counts; individually scaled | Babies 2025 · rank | 5-year rank movement | Peak year |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 794#403 | Down 130 rank positions in five years | 1980 | |||
| 278#863 | Down 128 rank positions in five years | 1954 | |||
| 5,578#52 | Up 46 rank positions in five years | 2025 | |||
| 1,666#208 | Up 49 rank positions in five years | 2006 | |||
| 1,649#215 | Down 74 rank positions in five years | 2012 | |||
| 199#1,083 | Down 302 rank positions in five years | 1994 | |||
| 606#499 | Down 266 rank positions in five years | 2014 | |||
| 87#1,827 | Down 26 rank positions in five years | 1920 | |||
| 138#1,358 | Up 330 rank positions in five years | 1997 | |||
| 1,017#333 | Down 28 rank positions in five years | 2021 | |||
| 165#1,226 | Down 61 rank positions in five years | 1921 | |||
| 27#3,956 | Down 303 rank positions in five years | 1980 | |||
| 688#454 | Down 34 rank positions in five years | 2022 | |||
| 453#619 | Up 128 rank positions in five years | 2025 | |||
| 30#3,720 | Down 1,518 rank positions in five years | 1920 | |||
| 196#1,096 | Down 468 rank positions in five years | 2016 | |||
| 340#757 | Down 146 rank positions in five years | 2021 | |||
| 131#1,397 | Down 454 rank positions in five years | 2008 | |||
| 88#1,819 | Down 252 rank positions in five years | 2009 | |||
| 357#736 | Down 198 rank positions in five years | 2020 | |||
| 75#2,009 | Down 914 rank positions in five years | 2014 | |||
| 53#2,521 | Up 35 rank positions in five years | 2011 | |||
| 28#3,929 | Down 1,182 rank positions in five years | 2007 | |||
| 92#1,755 | Up 315 rank positions in five years | 2025 | |||
| 33#3,452 | Down 902 rank positions in five years | 2013 | |||
| 26#4,075 | Up 681 rank positions in five years | 1918 | |||
| 87#1,834 | Up 256 rank positions in five years | 2024 | |||
| 65#2,194 | Down 21 rank positions in five years | 2015 | |||
| 71#2,089 | Down 199 rank positions in five years | 2021 | |||
| 18#5,312 | Down 823 rank positions in five years | 2010 | |||
| 65#2,184 | Up 959 rank positions in five years | 2024 | |||
| 72#2,065 | Up 13 rank positions in five years | 2024 | |||
| 156#1,266 | Up 867 rank positions in five years | 2025 | |||
| 88#1,823 | Up 1,309 rank positions in five years | 2025 | |||
| 14#6,348 | Up 5,291 rank positions in five years | 1918 | |||
| 51#2,572 | Up 1,567 rank positions in five years | 2024 | |||
| 54#2,485 | Up 1,440 rank positions in five years | 2025 | |||
| 46#2,793 | Up 49 rank positions in five years | 2017 | |||
| 14#6,361 | Down 453 rank positions in five years | 2014 | |||
| 14#6,388 | Down 3,058 rank positions in five years | 2016 | |||
| 16#5,727 | Down 151 rank positions in five years | 2024 | |||
| 26#4,113 | Up 554 rank positions in five years | 2022 | |||
| 14#6,247 | Down 439 rank positions in five years | 2016 | |||
| 17#5,589 | new | 2023 | |||
| 14#6,178 | Down 2,442 rank positions in five years | 2017 | |||
| 14#6,182 | Down 1,307 rank positions in five years | 2018 | |||
| 16#5,793 | Up 5,918 rank positions in five years | 2025 | |||
| 18#5,381 | Up 5,157 rank positions in five years | 2025 | |||
| 14#6,177 | new | 2025 | |||
| 19#5,078 | new | 2025 |
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-ley names climbing fastest
Biggest -ley names of all time
By total applications since 1880 — a different list from the one above, because it counts every generation, not just this one.
Every other ending
Sources & methodology
Rankings and counts come from official birth card-application data, 1880–2025. Counts are card applications rather than births, and any name given to fewer than 5 babies of one sex in a year is not published — so “—” means genuinely uncommon, never invalid. The “climbing fastest” row ranks by five-year rank movement as a ratio, and a name must be inside the top 1,000 with at least 200 applications in 2025 to qualify — a looser gate than the site-wide trending list uses, because inside a single ending the stricter one leaves some endings empty. Names ending in -ley also count toward names ending in Y — a suffix is a slice of its last letter, not a separate universe. Ending shares are measured over listed names only, and the 25-year comparison is a generation rather than five years because ending fashion moves far more slowly than any one name.