Kerry
Kerry reached its high-water mark in 1960 at number 158, and has been recorded 98,644 times in all. It is given to both boys and girls. In 2025 it ranked 2,451st. About 83,000 Kerrys are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 55.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Kerry boys named Kerry
Girls and boys called Kerry
years more girls than boys years more boys than girls
Kerry crossed from girls to boys in 2003, having already crossed in 1967, and has stayed there for 23 of the years counted since. At its furthest it was 86% boys, and in 2025 it was 71%.
The girls’ share of each year’s babies of the name, in the 93 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
- 98,644
- Estimated living today
- 83,000
- Median age today
- 55
- Peak year
- 1960
- Best rank
- 158th
- Rank in 2025
- 2,451st
- First recorded
- 1920
- Girls / boys
- 48,675 / 49,969
How old the living Kerrys are
born that year still alive today
Of the 98,644 babies given the name since 1920, about 83,000 are alive — 84 in every hundred. Roughly 1,500 of them are children and 21,000 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1970 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, a place name
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Kerrys
- Kerry Washington (born 1977)American actress
- Kerry Reid (born 1947)Australian tennis player
- Kerry Bishé (born 1984)New Zealand-born American actress
- Kerry Kennedy (born 1959)American human rights activist
- Kerry Katona (born 1980)English media personality and singer
- Kerry Anne Wells (born 1951)Australian model
- Kerry Von Erich (1960–1993)American professional wrestler
- Kerry Packer (1937–2005)Australian publishing, media and gaming tycoon
People named Kerry with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Kerry is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Kerry is most concentrated in Massachusetts (2.0×), Louisiana (1.9×), New Hampshire (1.4×), Utah (1.4×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1960
The most popular boys’ names the year Kerry peaked:
Kerry elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Scotland girls | Kerry | 5,106 | 29th |
| New Zealand boys | Kerry | 2,404 | 55th |
| New Zealand girls | Kerry | 1,917 | 53rd |
| England and Wales girls | Kerry | 1,804 | 136th |
| Ireland girls | Kerry | 603 | 149th |
| Northern Ireland girls | Kerry | 249 | 83rd |
| France boys | Kerry | 195 | 2,642nd |
| France girls | Kerry | 55 | 5,726th |
| England and Wales boys | Kerry | 38 | 1,578th |
| Ireland boys | Kerry | 13 | 280th |
| Scotland boys | Kerry | 4 | 271st |
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.
Kerry 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 | Kerry | — | 8 |
| Finland girls | Kerry | — | 6 |
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
Kerry 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.