Colby
The boy's name Colby has been in the national records since 1888, with 58,155 births to its name. In 2025 it ranked 615th. About 56,000 Colbys are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 24.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Colby boys named Colby
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 58,155
- Estimated living today
- 56,000
- Median age today
- 24
- Peak year
- 2001
- Best rank
- 99th
- Rank in 2025
- 615th
- First recorded
- 1888
- Girls / boys
- 4,184 / 53,971
How old the living Colbys are
born that year still alive today
Of the 58,155 babies given the name since 1888, about 56,000 are alive — 97 in every hundred. Roughly 13,000 of them are children and 310 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 2001 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
Origin a surname
From either the Old Norse personal name Koli or kol (“charcoal”) + býr (“settlement”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Colbys
- Colby O'Donis (born 1989)American singer
- Colby Stevenson (born 1997)American freestyle skier
- Colby Minifie (born 1992)American actress
- Colby Covington (born 1988)American mixed martial artist
- Colby Cave (1994–2020)Canadian ice hockey player
- Colby Ruckle (1893–1944)Canadian First World War flying ace
- Colby Armstrong (born 1982)Canadian ice hockey player
- Colby Slater (1896–1965)American rugby union player
People named Colby with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Colby is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Colby is most concentrated in Maine (4.3×), New Hampshire (4.2×), Utah (4.1×), Vermont (3.8×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 2001
The most popular boys’ names the year Colby peaked:
Colby elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| England and Wales boys | Colby | 2,528 | 224th |
| Scotland boys | Colby | 257 | 165th |
| Northern Ireland boys | Colby | 70 | 192nd |
| England and Wales girls | Colby | 45 | 1,970th |
| Ireland boys | Colby | 25 | 577th |
| Scotland girls | Colby | 11 | 557th |
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.
Related names
Colby 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.