Hilary
About 26,368 American babies have been named Hilary since 1882, most of them around 1990. In 2025 it ranked 5,238th. About 24,000 Hilarys are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 41.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Hilary boys named Hilary
Girls and boys called Hilary
years more girls than boys years more boys than girls
Hilary crossed from boys to girls in 1944, and has stayed there for 77 of the years counted since. At its furthest it was 100% girls, which is roughly where it still is.
The girls’ share of each year’s babies of the name, in the 107 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
- 26,368
- Estimated living today
- 24,000
- Median age today
- 41
- Peak year
- 1990
- Best rank
- 232nd
- Rank in 2025
- 5,238th
- First recorded
- 1882
- Girls / boys
- 24,171 / 2,197
How old the living Hilarys are
born that year still alive today
Of the 26,368 babies given the name since 1882, about 24,000 are alive — 89 in every hundred. Roughly 900 of them are children and 1,900 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1984 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 Latin
From Latin Hilarius (“cheerful, happy”), name of a fourth-century saint, and from its feminine form Hilaria.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Hilarys
- Hilary Swank (born 1974)American actress
- Hilary Duff (born 1987)American actress and singer
- Hilary of Poitiers (315–367)Bishop of Poitiers (c. 310 – c. 367)
- Hilary Mantel (1952–2022)British writer
- Hilary Putnam (1926–2016)American philosopher and mathematician
- Hilary Hahn (born 1979)American classical violinist
- Hilary Koprowski (1916–2013)Polish physician, virologist, immunologist and medical researcher
- Hilary Benn (born 1953)British politician
People named Hilary with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Hilary is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Hilary is most concentrated in New Hampshire (2.3×), Maine (2.1×), Vermont (1.9×), Idaho (1.9×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1990
The most popular girls’ names the year Hilary peaked:
Hilary elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ireland girls | Hilary | 1,101 | 107th |
| Italy girls | Hilary | 945 | — |
| Scotland girls | Hilary | 360 | 148th |
| France girls | Hilary | 345 | 729th |
| England and Wales girls | Hilary | 201 | 916th |
| England and Wales boys | Hilary | 3 | 4,991st |
| Poland boys | Hilary | 2 birth registrations | 745th |
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.
Hilary: rank by region
In 2018, Hilary was among the 10 most common names in 1 region of Italy.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Valle d'Aosta/Vallée d'Aoste | Hilary | 10 | 1 |
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Italy after 10 names – 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.
Hilary 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 | Hilary | — | 12 |
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 Hilary lives in Spain
Not a count of births but of people: 222 women called Hilary were living in Spain on 1 January 2025, of every age, born in any year. Where they live is not spread evenly.
Women: the provinces where it is densest
| Province | Spelling | People | Per thousand | Place there |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Balears, Illes | Hilary | 18 | 0.029 | 1,902 |
| Alicante/Alacant | Hilary | 28 | 0.027 | 1,986 |
| Murcia | Hilary | 19 | 0.024 | 1,775 |
| Málaga | Hilary | 16 | 0.017 | 2,396 |
| Castellón/Castelló | Hilary | 5 | 0.016 | 2,669 |
| Santa Cruz de Tenerife | Hilary | 9 | 0.016 | 3,588 |
Listed in 10 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 42 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
Hilary 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.