Tory
Tory is a boy's name that peaked in 1977, when it was the 478th most popular in the United States. It is given to both boys and girls. In 2025 it ranked 4,249th. About 10,000 Torys are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 37.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Tory boys named Tory
Girls and boys called Tory
years more girls than boys years more boys than girls
Tory crossed from girls to boys in 1964, and has stayed there for 44 of the years counted since. At its furthest it was 86% boys, and in 2025 it was 52%.
The girls’ share of each year’s babies of the name, in the 70 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
- 10,916
- Estimated living today
- 10,000
- Median age today
- 37
- Peak year
- 1977
- Best rank
- 478th
- Rank in 2025
- 4,249th
- First recorded
- 1947
- Girls / boys
- 3,926 / 6,990
How old the living Torys are
born that year still alive today
Of the 10,916 babies given the name since 1947, about 10,000 are alive — 94 in every hundred. Roughly 1,200 of them are children and 260 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1988 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
Short for Victoria when used as a female name, and for Victor or Salvatore when used as a male name.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Torys
- Tory Belleci (born 1970)Film maker and model maker, MythBusters build team member
- Tory Lane (born 1982)American pornographic actress and adult film director
- Tory Burch (born 1962)American fashion designer, businesswoman, and philanthropist
- Roger Tory Peterson (1908–1996)American naturalist, ornithologist and writer
- Tory Kittles (born 1975)American actor
People named Tory with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Tory is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Tory is most concentrated in Louisiana (3.9×), Florida (2.0×), Georgia (1.7×), Utah (1.6×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1977
The most popular boys’ names the year Tory peaked:
Tory elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| England and Wales boys | Tory | 46 | 3,017th |
| France girls | Tory | 20 | 6,562nd |
| England and Wales girls | Tory | 9 | 5,742nd |
| Northern Ireland girls | Tory | 3 | 358th |
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.
Related names
Tory 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.