Barley
Boys' nameMeaning not yet documented
Barley has been given to 19 babies in the U.S. since 2020. It was used fewer than 5 times in 2025, so it doesn't appear in the latest year's list — today it's a genuinely uncommon pick. Its peak year was 2020, with 7 recorded.
Babies named Barley, 2022
1 in 564,000
Barley over time, 1880–2025
Based on births in the U.S. Babies given the name each year. Hover the chart — or focus it and use the arrow keys — for any year. Gaps mean the name was given fewer than 5 times that year; these counts are unpublished.
How common is Barley?
Barley had fewer than 5 recorded uses in 2025, so these figures use 2022, the last year it was published.
- Among all babies, 2022
- 1 in 564,000
- 6 of 3,385,755 births
- Among boys only
- 1 in 291,000
- <0.01% of boys
- Rank, 2022
- Unranked
- Fewer than 5 uses
- Coin-flip room size
- 391,139 kids
- Even odds of a second one
Where Barley sits on the popularity scale
Chance at least one other child shares the name
If the other children were drawn at random from the 2022 national name distribution. Real classrooms cluster by region and community, so treat these as a floor, not a ceiling.
Put another way: gather 391,139 children born in 2022 and it's an even bet that one of them is another Barley. In a class of 30 the chance is Under 1%.
When Barleys were born
Half of everyone ever recorded as Barley was born before 2021 — so the typical Barley is around 4 today.
- Biggest decade
- 2020s
- 100.0% of all use
- Born in the last 25 years
- 100.0%
- A modern name
- Recorded since 1950
- 19
- People you could plausibly meet
2020s — 100.0% of all recorded uses (19).
Is Barley rising or falling?
Rank movement and count movement can disagree — the number of distinct names in use keeps growing, so a name holding a steady count still slides down the list. Both are shown.
- Rank vs 1 year ago
- —
- Not ranked then
- Rank vs 5 years ago
- New entry
- Not ranked then
- Rank vs 10 years ago
- —
- Not ranked then
- Births vs 10 years ago
- —
- Not published both years
- Share of its own peak
- 0%
- Peak was 2020 (7)
- Years since peak
- 5
- Years
- Year-to-year steadiness
- Steady
- 7.1% average annual change
Spellings of Barley
Barley is not the most common spelling — Bradley is, with 37.7% against Barley's <0.01%.
Grouped by closeness of spelling (up to two letter changes), same sex, with a floor on all-time use. It catches Sophia/Sofia and Aiden/Ayden, and misses spellings that sound alike but look different, like Sean and Shawn.
Barley around the world
Where Barley ranks in official birth records elsewhere in the world. Rankings only — the number of births isn’t comparable between places, so it isn’t shown.
- England & Wales2020–2025#5,137in 2025
Popularity data from Office for National Statistics. ONS data under Open Government Licence v3.0.
Barley by the numbers
The raw record for each sex the name is used for.
Names similar to Barley
Matched on shared beginnings and endings, similar length, and comparable popularity.
Sibling names for Barley
Names from the same era and popularity tier — the two things that make a sibling set feel deliberate — skipping lookalike spellings and shared initials.