Gary
Gary reached its high-water mark in 1952 at number 10, and has been recorded 905,438 times in all. In 2025 it ranked 1,073rd. About 601,000 Garys are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 67.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Gary boys named Gary
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 905,438
- Estimated living today
- 601,000
- Median age today
- 67
- Peak year
- 1952
- Best rank
- 10th
- Rank in 2025
- 1,073rd
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 3,286 / 902,152
How old the living Garys are
born that year still alive today
Of the 905,438 babies given the name since 1880, about 601,000 are alive — 66 in every hundred. Roughly 7,100 of them are children and 349,000 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1958 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 Germanic languages
Medieval short form of Germanic compound names beginning with gari or geri ("spear"), such as Gerard, Garrett, Gerald or Gerbert. Cognate with the Scottish and Irish - name Garaidh. Sometimes also a short form of Gareth.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Garys
- Gary Oldman (born 1958)British actor and filmmaker
- Gary Cooper (1901–1961)American actor
- Gary Lineker (born 1960)English football pundit and former player
- Gary Sinise (born 1955)American actor
- Gary Coleman (1968–2010)American actor
- Gary S. Becker (1930–2014)American economist
- Gary Neville (born 1975)English football pundit and former playe
- Gary Moore (1952–2011)Northern Irish musician
People named Gary with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Gary is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Gary is most concentrated in Iowa (1.7×), Montana (1.7×), West Virginia (1.7×), North Dakota (1.7×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1952
The most popular boys’ names the year Gary peaked:
Gary elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Scotland boys | Gary | 11,342 | 16th |
| Ireland boys | Gary | 7,588 | 29th |
| France boys | Gary | 5,565 | 139th |
| New Zealand boys | Gary | 5,520 | 19th |
| England and Wales boys | Gary | 1,581 | 147th |
| Northern Ireland boys | Gary | 346 | 57th |
| Belgium boys | Gary | 182 | 385th |
| Switzerland boys | Gary | 58 | 634th |
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.
Gary: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German boys | Switzerland | Gary | 10 | 0.001% | 658th |
| French boys | Switzerland | Gary | 46 | 0.011% | 364th |
| Italian boys | Switzerland | Gary | 2 | 0.003% | 180th |
Parts of a country counted above, not extra births. The share is what makes the regions comparable: they differ in size by a factor of three hundred.
Gary: rank by region
In 2020, Gary was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brussels | Gary | 311 | 5 |
In 2020, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Gary appears in the lists for Brussels-Capital Region (311th).
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children – and published nothing after. So a region missing here is one where the name fell outside what was published, not one where it went unused. Places are shared where names tie, and the further down a list a place is, the more names can share it.
Gary 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 boys | Gary | 39 | 56 |
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.
Where Gary lives in Spain
Not a count of births but of people: 547 men called Gary were living in Spain on 1 January 2025, of every age, born in any year. Where they live is not spread evenly.
Men: the provinces where it is densest
| Province | Spelling | People | Per thousand | Place there |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alicante/Alacant | Gary | 121 | 0.120 | 677 |
| Málaga | Gary | 66 | 0.075 | 791 |
| Almería | Gary | 25 | 0.064 | 1,027 |
| Palmas, Las | Gary | 34 | 0.058 | 1,392 |
| Murcia | Gary | 39 | 0.049 | 1,096 |
| Balears, Illes | Gary | 27 | 0.043 | 1,327 |
Listed in 17 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 35 it is either held by fewer than 5 people – the point below which the source withholds a name – or it fell past the 5,000 names the source will print for one province. Neither means nobody there is called it. The rate is the source's own, not a share worked out here.
Related names
Gary 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.