Welford
Boys' nameMeaning not yet documented
Welford has been given to 487 babies in the U.S. since 1910. 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 1925, with 19 recorded.
Babies named Welford, 1984
1 in 698,000
Welford 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 Gaps mean the name was given fewer than 5 times that year; these counts are unpublished.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 Welford?
Welford had fewer than 5 recorded uses in 2025, so these figures use 1984, the last year it was published.
- Among all babies, 1984
- 1 in 698,000
- 5 of 3,488,451 births
- Among boys only
- 1 in 361,000
- <0.01% of boys
- Rank, 1984
- Unranked
- Fewer than 5 uses
- Coin-flip room size
- 483,603 kids
- Even odds of a second one
Where Welford sits on the popularity scale
Chance at least one other child shares the name
If the other children were drawn at random from the 1984 national name distribution. Real classrooms cluster by region and community, so treat these as a floor, not a ceiling.
Put another way: gather 483,603 children born in 1984 and it's an even bet that one of them is another Welford. In a class of 30 the chance is Under 1%.
When Welfords were born
Half of everyone ever recorded as Welford was born before 1935 — so the typical Welford is around 90 today.
- Biggest decade
- 1920s
- 25.3% of all use
- Born in the last 25 years
- 7.4%
- Mostly a past generation
- Recorded since 1950
- 103
- People you could plausibly meet
1920s — 25.3% of all recorded uses (123).
Is Welford 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 1925 (19)
- Years since peak
- 100
- Years
- Year-to-year steadiness
- Volatile
- 35.8% average annual change
Spellings of Welford
Welford is not the most common spelling — Wilford is, with 28.6% against Welford's 1.3%.
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 Welford is used
Across 1910–2025, Welford was most concentrated in Virginia — about 1 in 20,000 boys, against 1 in 20,909 across all states with data.
Most concentrated
- 1Virginia1 in 20,000
Shading is the share of that state's recorded boys 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. Welford has too little recent state data to map, so this covers all years from 1910.
Welford by the numbers
The raw record for each sex the name is used for.
Names similar to Welford
Matched on shared beginnings and endings, similar length, and comparable popularity.
Sibling names for Welford
Names from the same era and popularity tier — the two things that make a sibling set feel deliberate — skipping lookalike spellings and shared initials.