Stanley
The boy's name Stanley has been in the national records since 1880, with 302,862 births to its name. In 2025 it ranked 863rd. About 126,000 Stanleys are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 66.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Stanley boys named Stanley
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 302,862
- Estimated living today
- 126,000
- Median age today
- 66
- Peak year
- 1954
- Best rank
- 58th
- Rank in 2025
- 863rd
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 1,437 / 301,425
How old the living Stanleys are
born that year still alive today
Of the 302,862 babies given the name since 1880, about 126,000 are alive — 42 in every hundred. Roughly 6,100 of them are children and 69,000 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1959 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 places in England, Old English stān (“stone”) + lēah (“meadow”). Equivalent.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Stanleys
- Stanley Kubrick (1928–1999)American filmmaker
- Stanley Baldwin (1867–1947)British statesman
- Stanley Tucci (born 1960)American actor and author
- Stanley Cohen (1922–2020)American biochemist
- Stanley B. Prusiner (born 1942)American neurologist and biochemist
- Stanley Matthews (1915–2000)English association football player
- M. Stanley Whittingham (born 1941)Nobel laureate in chemistry & American chemist
- Stanley Milgram (1933–1984)American social psychologist
People named Stanley with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Stanley is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Stanley is most concentrated in Hawaii (2.7×), Vermont (2.0×), Pennsylvania (1.7×), Connecticut (1.7×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1954
The most popular boys’ names the year Stanley peaked:
Stanley elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| England and Wales boys | Stanley | 16,890 | 59th |
| France boys | Stanley | 3,060 | 469th |
| Scotland boys | Stanley | 313 | 239th |
| Ireland boys | Stanley | 129 | 240th |
| Poland boys | Stanley | 48 birth registrations | 339th |
| Belgium boys | Stanley | 38 | 923rd |
| Northern Ireland boys | Stanley | 38 | 250th |
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.
Stanley: rank by region
In 1997, Stanley was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Stanley | 676 | 5 |
In 2021, Stanley was given 2 times or more in 1 region of Poland.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Śląskie | Stanley | 217 | 2 |
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children, Poland below 2 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.
Stanley by city
| City | Years | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin boys | 2017–2023 | 4 | 593rd |
One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.
Stanley 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 | Stanley | 32 | 70 |
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
Stanley 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.