Courtney
Courtney is a girl's name that peaked in 1990, when it was the 17th most popular in the United States. In 2025 it ranked 2,326th. About 271,000 Courtneys are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 35.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Courtney boys named Courtney
Girls and boys called Courtney
years more girls than boys years more boys than girls
Courtney crossed from boys to girls in 1962, and has stayed there for 64 of the years counted since. At its furthest it was 98% girls, and in 2025 it was 67%.
The girls’ share of each year’s babies of the name, in the 114 years in which at least 25 babies got it. The line touches the middle more often than there are crossings marked: a year or two on the other side is not a name changing hands, and only a move that holds for 5 counted years and reaches 60/40 is recorded as one. All 581 names that changed sex.
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 281,432
- Estimated living today
- 271,000
- Median age today
- 35
- Peak year
- 1990
- Best rank
- 17th
- Rank in 2025
- 2,326th
- First recorded
- 1881
- Girls / boys
- 258,399 / 23,033
How old the living Courtneys are
born that year still alive today
Of the 281,432 babies given the name since 1881, about 271,000 are alive — 96 in every hundred. Roughly 9,300 of them are children and 1,600 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1990 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
Variant of Courtenay, an aristocratic Norman surname derived from place names in Normandy, from Latin Curtenus, a personal name from curtus (“short”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Courtneys
- Courtney Love (born 1964)American rock musician
- Courtney Thorne-Smith (born 1967)American actress
- Courtney B. Vance (born 1960)American actor
- Courtney Barnett (born 1987)Australian singer-songwriter and rock guitarist
- Courtney Eaton (born 1996)Australian actress and model
- Courtney Hodges (1887–1966)United States general
- Courtney Lee (born 1985)American basketball player
- Courtney Ford (born 1978)American actress
People named Courtney with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Courtney is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Courtney is most concentrated in Louisiana (1.6×), Delaware (1.4×), Alaska (1.4×), New Hampshire (1.4×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1990
The most popular girls’ names the year Courtney peaked:
Courtney elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| England and Wales girls | Courtney | 23,171 | 17th |
| New Zealand girls | Courtney | 2,941 | 10th |
| Scotland girls | Courtney | 2,757 | 15th |
| Northern Ireland girls | Courtney | 1,101 | 12th |
| Ireland girls | Courtney | 890 | 43rd |
| England and Wales boys | Courtney | 424 | 247th |
| France girls | Courtney | 135 | 1,961st |
| Belgium girls | Courtney | 23 | 939th |
| Scotland boys | Courtney | 3 | 375th |
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.
Courtney 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 | Courtney | 7 | 15 |
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
Courtney 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.