girls:
1.1k births since 2006
#4646 (19th percentile)
boys:
1.9k births since 1920
#2867 (37th percentile)
overall:
3k births since 1920
#4976 (36th percentile)
The name Bowie is the #4,976 most popular name of all time in the U.S. on a gender-neutral basis, with a total of 2,972 recorded births since 1920. This represents the 35.7% percentile of name popularity (more popular than 35.7% of all names). For boys, it ranks #2,867 (37.5% percentile) for all time with 1,902 births since 1920. For girls, it ranks #4,646 (18.7% percentile) for all time with 1,070 births since 2006.
Bowie first appeared in U.S. birth records in 1920 (1920 for boys and 2006 for girls). Birth data for Bowie is available in 35 out of the 104 years between 1920 and 2023 (35 years for boys and 18 years for girls). The Social Security Administration only reports birth data for years in which the name was given to at least five children of the same gender.
The name Bowie has been given to both genders, with a slight preference for boys (64.0% of all recorded births). In 2023, 60.4% of babies named Bowie were boys.
For boys, Bowie reached its peak popularity in 2021, achieving the 24.4% percentile (ranked #703) with 126 births per million. The name was most common in 2021, with 126 births per million (ranked 24.4% percentile). Since reaching a low point around 2000, the popularity of this name for boys has been increasing. Currently, Bowie ranks #724 for boys (20.5% percentile) with 105 births per million, which is 82.9% of its peak share of births.
For girls, Bowie reached its peak popularity in 2021, achieving the 14.2% percentile (ranked #803) with 77 births per million. The name was most common in 2021, with 77 births per million (ranked 14.2% percentile). Over the past 5 years, the popularity of this name for girls has been increasing. Currently, Bowie ranks #826 for girls (12.8% percentile) with 72 births per million, which is 93.5% of its peak share of births.
This chart shows the total number of births per million babies in each year for the name "Bowie".
These names exclude other spelling variations of this name. View all variations of Bowie.
These similar-looking names have spellings that are closest to the spelling of "Bowie", in the sense that there are the fewest number of letter differences between the two spellings. These names exclude other spelling variations of this name. View all variations of Bowie.
Our model has identified 2 different pronunciations for the name Bowie. Click the play button under each pronunciation to hear it spoken aloud.
Our model is 80.0% confident that Bowie is pronounced as BOH-ee, which has 2 syllables. The next most likely pronunciation is BUE-ee, at 20.0% confidence, with 2 syllables.
If none of the pronunciations above sound right to you, could you please check whether any of these related pronunciations should be applied to the name Bowie? These are pronunciations that other similar names use, but which are not currently associated with Bowie. If you think any of these are valid pronunciations for Bowie, please vote using the thumbs up button.
Our confidence scores estimate the likelihood that a particular pronunciation is the most correct for a given name spelling. These scores are derived from pronunciation dictionaries, manual verification, your feedback, and a fine-tuned large language model trained to generate name pronunciations.
For any given spelling, confidence scores across all identified pronunciations sum to 100%. However, these scores don't account for the possibility of valid pronunciations that our model hasn't identified.
The raw pronunciations shown (like B OW1 IY0) use the ARPAbet phoneme system, a standardized way to represent English speech sounds. Each symbol represents a distinct sound in American English. Visit the ARPAbet Wikipedia page to learn more about these phonetic symbols.
Pronunciation audio is generated by an open source text to speech model that has been customized to adhere to pronunciations provided in ARPAbet format, but sometimes pronunciations that differ subtly will sound identical, particularly if the only difference is the level of emphasis on a syllable or a single vowel sound.
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