Timothy

Popularity, 1880–2025

girls named Timothy boys named Timothy

By the numbers

Total US births

1,088,520

Estimated living today

910,000

Median age today

51

Peak year

1959

Best rank

12th

Rank in 2025

203rd

First recorded

1880

Girls / boys

4,328 / 1,084,192

How old the living Timothys are

born that year still alive today

Of the 1,088,520 babies given the name since 1880, about 910,000 are alive — 84 in every hundred. Roughly 47,000 of them are children and 183,000 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1974 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 Ancient Greek

From Middle French Timothée, from Latin Tīmotheus, from Ancient Greek Τῑμόθεος, from τῑμάω (“to honour”) + θεός (“god”).

Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Notable Timothys

• Timothy Dalton (born 1946)British actor of stage, film and television
• Timothy Leary (1920–1996)American psychologist
• Timothy (17–97)1st century Christian evangelist, philosopher and bishop
• Timothy Hutton (born 1960)American actor and director
• Timothy Spall (born 1957)English actor
• Timothy Snyder (born 1969)American historian
• Timothy Olyphant (born 1968)American actor
• Timothy McVeigh (1968–2001)American domestic anti-government terrorist

People named Timothy with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).

Where Timothy is most common

• CA86,962
• NY76,122
• OH72,526
• PA62,473
• IL62,229
• MI56,299
• TX44,780
• FL33,226
• IN33,187
• NC33,068

Relative to how many babies each state records, Timothy is most concentrated in Vermont (1.6×), New Hampshire (1.6×), Alaska (1.5×), Ohio (1.4×).

Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.

Names of 1959

The most popular boys’ names the year Timothy peaked:

• Michael
• David
• James
• John
• Robert
• Mark

All the names of 1959

Timothy elsewhere

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.

Timothy: births by region

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.

By canton, Timothy is most concentrated in Ticino, where 0.10% of children were given it – 60 of them.

Timothy: rank by region

In 2023, Timothy was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.

In 2018, Timothy was among the 10 most common names in 1 region of Italy.

In 2025, Timothy was given 2 times or more in 2 regions of Poland.

In 2021, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Timothy appears in the lists for Province of Hainaut (235th).

Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children, Italy after 10 names, 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.

Timothy by city

One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.

Timothy 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.

A count of people on a register – the Netherlands on 1 January 2018, 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 Timothy lives in Spain

Not a count of births but of people: 229 men called Timothy 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

Listed in 9 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 43 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

• Tim
• Timmy
• Timmothy
• Timmie
• Timber
• Timoteo
• Timia
• Timberly
• Timika
• Timeka
• Timur
• Timonthy

Timothy against another name

Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.

• Timothy vs Tim
• Timothy vs Timmy
• Timothy vs Timmothy
• Timothy vs Timmie
• Timothy vs Timber
• Timothy vs Timoteo

Compare Timothy with a name of your own