Girl Names Ending In -Ley
Girls' 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 girls, 2025
- 2.5%
- vs 3.0% in 2000
- Names in use
- 239
- 547 recorded since 1880
- Ending peaked
- 1935
- at 4.1% of names
- Most popular now
- Riley
- of 239 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1,829#164 | Down 11 rank positions in five years | 1987 | |||
| 133#1,586 | Down 36 rank positions in five years | 1935 | |||
| 2,556#104 | Down 23 rank positions in five years | 2003 | |||
| 314#861 | Down 345 rank positions in five years | 2000 | |||
| 4,441#48 | Down 15 rank positions in five years | 2016 | |||
| 1,446#209 | Down 37 rank positions in five years | 1998 | |||
| 3,508#67 | Down 18 rank positions in five years | 2015 | |||
| 179#1,251 | Down 577 rank positions in five years | 1993 | |||
| 2,671#93 | Down 34 rank positions in five years | 2017 | |||
| 2,254#121 | Down 10 rank positions in five years | 2014 | |||
| 950#322 | Down 111 rank positions in five years | 2008 | |||
| 1,362#225 | Down 12 rank positions in five years | 2014 | |||
| 748#418 | Down 132 rank positions in five years | 2017 | |||
| 153#1,420 | Down 572 rank positions in five years | 2004 | |||
| 753#415 | Down 214 rank positions in five years | 2017 | |||
| 621#483 | Down 128 rank positions in five years | 2014 | |||
| 409#692 | Down 258 rank positions in five years | 2012 | |||
| 900#338 | Up 405 rank positions in five years | 2008 | |||
| 1,933#156 | Up 128 rank positions in five years | 2025 | |||
| 481#608 | Down 246 rank positions in five years | 2017 | |||
| 393#714 | Down 159 rank positions in five years | 2014 | |||
| 170#1,309 | Down 356 rank positions in five years | 2011 | |||
| 356#760 | Down 223 rank positions in five years | 2014 | |||
| 367#742 | Down 288 rank positions in five years | 2018 | |||
| 420#677 | Up 269 rank positions in five years | 1988 | |||
| 1,858#159 | Up 735 rank positions in five years | 2024 | |||
| 127#1,638 | Down 350 rank positions in five years | 2012 | |||
| 252#1,001 | Down 418 rank positions in five years | 2016 | |||
| 135#1,567 | Up 1,955 rank positions in five years | 2007 | |||
| 339#805 | Down 266 rank positions in five years | 2021 | |||
| 301#888 | Down 66 rank positions in five years | 2021 | |||
| 643#479 | Down 106 rank positions in five years | 2020 | |||
| 213#1,112 | Down 391 rank positions in five years | 2020 | |||
| 322#845 | Down 258 rank positions in five years | 2020 | |||
| 146#1,468 | Up 278 rank positions in five years | 2011 | |||
| 196#1,183 | Up 137 rank positions in five years | 2017 | |||
| 101#1,926 | Up 50 rank positions in five years | 2021 | |||
| 268#963 | Down 123 rank positions in five years | 2021 | |||
| 194#1,190 | Down 433 rank positions in five years | 2020 | |||
| 102#1,904 | Down 695 rank positions in five years | 2017 | |||
| 243#1,032 | Up 265 rank positions in five years | 2025 | |||
| 141#1,513 | Down 222 rank positions in five years | 2018 | |||
| 181#1,246 | Down 175 rank positions in five years | 2019 | |||
| 148#1,453 | Up 477 rank positions in five years | 2024 | |||
| 119#1,719 | Down 668 rank positions in five years | 2020 | |||
| 95#2,013 | Down 110 rank positions in five years | 2018 | |||
| 170#1,314 | Up 818 rank positions in five years | 2024 | |||
| 207#1,131 | Up 4,932 rank positions in five years | 2025 | |||
| 110#1,832 | Up 2,916 rank positions in five years | 2025 | |||
| 110#1,822 | Up 7,364 rank positions in five years | 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.