Betsy
The girl's name Betsy has been in the national records since 1880, with 48,957 births to its name. In 2025 it ranked 2,719th. About 36,000 Betsys are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 61.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Betsy boys named Betsy
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 48,957
- Estimated living today
- 36,000
- Median age today
- 61
- Peak year
- 1959
- Best rank
- 228th
- Rank in 2025
- 2,719th
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 48,947 / 10
How old the living Betsys are
born that year still alive today
Of the 48,957 babies given the name since 1880, about 36,000 are alive — 73 in every hundred. Roughly 2,000 of them are children and 15,000 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1964 and half after.
An estimate, not a count. SSA births aged forward through SSA cohort life tables, which know nothing about who left the country or arrived in it — so for a name that mostly came to America rather than being born in it, this is a floor rather than a figure. Where you fall among living Americans.
Where the name comes from
From the +.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Betsys
- Betsy DeVos (born 1958)American politician and philanthropist
- Betsy Blair (1923–2009)American actress
- Betsy Brandt (born 1973)American actress
- Betsy Russell (born 1963)American actress
- Betsy Ross (1752–1836)American upholsterer who was credited by her relatives with making the first American flag
- Betsy Palmer (1926–2015)American actress
- Betsy Drake (1923–2015)American actress and writer
- Betsy Nagelsen (born 1956)US tennis player
People named Betsy with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Betsy is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Betsy is most concentrated in North Carolina (2.4×), Connecticut (2.1×), Hawaii (1.8×), Vermont (1.8×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1959
The most popular girls’ names the year Betsy peaked:
Betsy elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| England and Wales girls | Betsy | 5,343 | 135th |
| France girls | Betsy | 280 | 763rd |
| Scotland girls | Betsy | 58 | 379th |
| Northern Ireland girls | Betsy | 16 | 334th |
Counts come from each country's own records and are not comparable with the US figures above, which cover different years and a different definition of a recorded name. Where a country writes the name several ways, the spellings are added together and the most common is shown. A row marked name registrations is counting something else: Portugal ranks each of a child's two given names separately, so a girl registered Maria Leonor is in both the Maria row and the Leonor row, and that figure is not a number of children.
Betsy among the living
How many people each country's register counts under the name, rather than how many were given it in any one year. Each register was read on one date, and they are not the same date.
| Country | Spelling | First forename | Any forename |
|---|---|---|---|
| Finland girls | Betsy | 9 | 9 |
A count of people on a register – Finland on 4 August 2026 – and not of births, so it cannot be compared with the figures above. Names with very few bearers are withheld, and a dash in the first-forename column means the register would not say rather than that nobody goes by it.
Related names
Betsy against another name
Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.
Try it on yourself
Source: US Social Security Administration, national and state baby-name files, 1880–2025. Counts include only births registered with the SSA, and names with fewer than five births in a year are not published. The living estimate applies SSA cohort life tables to those births; it counts people born in the United States, so it misses anyone who arrived later and anyone who has left.