Name Awesome

Tawny

Girls' name

Light brown

Tawny has been given to 4,228 babies in the U.S. since 1947. 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 1989, with 217 recorded.

Babies named Tawny, 2024

1 in 669,000

Tawny over time, 1880–2025

Girls
010020030018801900192019401960198020002020

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 Gaps mean the name was given fewer than 5 times that year; these counts are unpublished.

Tawny: meaning, origin, and history

Light brown

Deeper origin not confirmed in the cited records

What Tawny means

Tawny means “light brown”.

Documented naming usage and pronunciation

Tawny is used in English (Modern).

Another recorded pronunciation is /ˈtɔː.ni/ for Tawny.

American usage and historical context

In the United States, 4,228 girls were recorded with the name Tawny between 1947 and 2024. Its highest annual count was 217 in 1989; its best national rank was #857 in 1989.

Sources & methodologyReferences, data & attribution

Meaning, origin, and language notes draw on the references below.

American popularity figures use published Social Security Administration records for this exact spelling. Counts below five for a name, sex, and year are omitted.

How common is Tawny?

Tawny had fewer than 5 recorded uses in 2025, so these figures use 2024, the last year it was published.

Among all babies, 2024
1 in 669,000
5 of 3,342,801 births
Among girls only
1 in 324,000
<0.01% of girls
Rank, 2024
Unranked
Fewer than 5 uses
Coin-flip room size
463,412 kids
Even odds of a second one

Where Tawny sits on the popularity scale

Rarest published (5 a year)#1 — Olivia (13,544)

Chance at least one other child shares the name

If the other children were drawn at random from the 2024 national name distribution. Real classrooms cluster by region and community, so treat these as a floor, not a ceiling.

Class of 20Under 1%
Class of 30Under 1%
Grade of 100Under 1%
School of 500Under 1%

Put another way: gather 463,412 children born in 2024 and it's an even bet that one of them is another Tawny. In a class of 30 the chance is Under 1%.

When Tawnys were born

Half of everyone ever recorded as Tawny was born before 1985 — so the typical Tawny is around 40 today.

Median birth year
1985
About 40 years old
Biggest decade
1980s
36.5% of all use
Born in the last 25 years
7.9%
Mostly a past generation
Recorded since 1950
4,201
People you could plausibly meet
Choose a decade

1980s — 36.5% of all recorded uses (1,542).

Is Tawny 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 1989 (217)
Years since peak
36
Years
Year-to-year steadiness
Volatile
35.8% average annual change
Best rank ever
#857
1989

Spellings of Tawny

Tawny is not the most common spelling — Tammy is, with 40.5% against Tawny's 0.52%.

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.

Where Tawny is used

Across 1910–2025, Tawny was most concentrated in California — about 1 in 12,500 girls, against 1 in 54,933 across all states with data. It was least common in Wisconsin (1 in —).

08 per 100,000

Most concentrated

  1. 1California1 in 12,500
  2. 2Washington1 in 20,000
  3. 3Utah1 in 25,000
  4. 4Oregon1 in 33,333
  5. 5Colorado1 in 50,000
  6. 6Hawaii1 in 50,000
  7. 7Arizona1 in 100,000
  8. 8Florida1 in 100,000

Shading is the share of that state's recorded girls given this name, not the raw count — otherwise the map would just show which states are biggest. Unshaded states have no published records for this period. U.S. birth records suppress state-year counts below 5; state counts therefore don't add up to the national total. Every state links to its full rankings. Tawny has too little recent state data to map, so this covers all years from 1910.

Tawny around the world

Where Tawny 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 & Wales
    1996–2023
    #4,710
    in 2023
  • Canada
    1991–1997
    #1,994
    in 1997
  • South Australia
    1984–1990
    #691
    in 1990

Popularity data from Office for National Statistics, Statistics Canada and Consumer and Business Services (South Australia). ONS data under Open Government Licence v3.0. StatCan data under Statistics Canada Open Licence. CBS SA data under CC BY 4.0.

Notable people named Tawny

People whose public names include Tawny, backed by Wikidata given-name records and ordered by linked Wikimedia pages. The name may be a middle name.

People data from Wikidata (CC0). Fame is measured, not judged — the order reflects how widely each person is documented, not the U.S. birth records popularity this page is otherwise about.

Tawny by the numbers

The raw record for each sex the name is used for.

As a girl's name

Rank in 2025
Unranked
Trend vs 5 yrs ago
—
Best rank ever
#857
1989
Peak year
1989
217 that year
First recorded
1947
Last recorded
2024
All-time count
4,228
Count in 2025
Under 5

Names similar to Tawny

Matched on shared beginnings and endings, similar length, and comparable popularity.

TawniTawnyaTawanaTawandaTawnaTawannaTawnieTawneeTawniaTawneyTawnTawanTawynaTawshaTawonaTawaniaTawondaTawonnaTawanyaShawnyTawnniTawainaTawathaTawne

Names with a curve like Tawny

Not spelling — timing. These names rose, peaked and faded in the same years as Tawny, so they read as being from the same moment even when they look nothing alike.

StephaniSamathaKristanAleshiaKandaceCassondraCodyKatiLeighannKandiceMarkitaTabetha

Sibling names for Tawny

Names from the same era and popularity tier — the two things that make a sibling set feel deliberate — skipping lookalike spellings and shared initials.

Explore around Tawny

Top names of 1989, Tawny's peak yearThe 1980s in fullOther names that peaked in 1989Girls' names starting with T