girls:
4.1k births since 1950
#2699 (53rd percentile)
boys:
53k births since 1888
#481 (90th percentile)
overall:
57.1k births since 1888
#990 (87th percentile)
The name Colby is the #990 most popular name of all time in the U.S. on a gender-neutral basis, with a total of 57,096 recorded births since 1888. This represents the 87.2% percentile of name popularity (more popular than 87.2% of all names). For boys, it ranks #481 (89.5% percentile) for all time with 53,022 births since 1888. For girls, it ranks #2,699 (52.8% percentile) for all time with 4,074 births since 1950.
Colby first appeared in U.S. birth records in 1888 (1888 for boys and 1950 for girls). Birth data for Colby is available in 109 out of the 136 years between 1888 and 2023 (109 years for boys and 69 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 Colby has been given almost exclusively to boys, with 92.9% of all recorded births being male. In 2023, 90.9% of babies named Colby were boys.
For boys, Colby reached its peak popularity in 2001, achieving the 88.2% percentile (ranked #98) with 1,866 births per million. The name was most common in 2001, with 1,866 births per million (ranked 88.2% percentile). Since reaching a low point around 2021, the popularity of this name for boys has been increasing. Currently, Colby ranks #515 for boys (43.5% percentile) with 255 births per million, which is 13.7% of its peak share of births.
For girls, Colby reached its peak popularity in 1985, achieving the 17.6% percentile (ranked #659) with 79 births per million. The name was most common in 1985, with 79 births per million (ranked 17.6% percentile). Since reaching a low point around 2016, the popularity of this name for girls has been increasing. Currently, Colby ranks #905 for girls (4.4% percentile) with 27 births per million, which is 34.0% of its peak share of births.
This chart shows the total number of births per million babies in each year for the name "Colby".
These names exclude other spelling variations of this name. View all variations of Colby.
These similar-looking names have spellings that are closest to the spelling of "Colby", 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 Colby.
Our model found one way to pronounce the name Colby. Click the play button under each pronunciation to hear it spoken aloud.
Our model is 100.0% confident that Colby is pronounced as KOHL-bee, which has 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 Colby? These are pronunciations that other similar names use, but which are not currently associated with Colby. If you think any of these are valid pronunciations for Colby, 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 K OW1 L B 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.
© 2025 NamePlay.org
Made with ❤️ by Aaron J Becker