girls:
24.1k births since 1914
#914 (84th percentile)
boys:
2.2k births since 1882
#2685 (41st percentile)
overall:
26.3k births since 1882
#1561 (80th percentile)
The name Hilary is the #1,561 most popular name of all time in the U.S. on a gender-neutral basis, with a total of 26,306 recorded births since 1882. This represents the 79.8% percentile of name popularity (more popular than 79.8% of all names). For girls, it ranks #914 (84.0% percentile) for all time with 24,109 births since 1914. For boys, it ranks #2,685 (41.4% percentile) for all time with 2,197 births since 1882.
Hilary first appeared in U.S. birth records in 1882 (1882 for boys and 1914 for girls). Birth data for Hilary is available in 127 out of the 142 years between 1882 and 2023 (102 years for girls and 98 years for boys). 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 Hilary has been given almost exclusively to girls, with 91.6% of all recorded births being female. Interestingly, until around 1945, the name was more popular for boys (82.6% boys from 1882 to 1944), but since then it has been more commonly used for girls (96.2% girls from 1945 to 2023).
For girls, Hilary reached its peak popularity in 1992, achieving the 74.0% percentile (ranked #224) with 584 births per million. The name was most common in 1990, with 592 births per million (ranked 73.5% percentile). Since reaching a low point around 2021, the popularity of this name for girls has been increasing. Currently, Hilary ranks #892 for girls (5.8% percentile) with 34 births per million, which is 5.8% of its peak share of births.
For boys, Hilary reached its peak popularity in 1924, achieving the 8.7% percentile (ranked #506) with 45 births per million. The name was most common in 1891, with 73 births per million (ranked 1.5% percentile). There have been no recorded male births with this name since 2018.
This chart shows the total number of births per million babies in each year for the name "Hilary".
These names exclude other spelling variations of Hillary. View all variations of Hillary.
These similar-looking names have spellings that are closest to the spelling of "Hilary", in the sense that there are the fewest number of letter differences between the two spellings. This list excludes the 12 other name spellings that we've determined are also variations of "Hillary" based on shared pronunciations. Click here for more details on names that are pronounced like Hillary..
Our model has identified 2 different pronunciations for the name Hilary. Click the play button under each pronunciation to hear it spoken aloud.
Our model is 87.3% confident that Hilary is pronounced as HIH-ler-ee, which has 3 syllables. The next most likely pronunciation is HAI-ler-ee, at 12.7% confidence, with 3 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 Hilary? These are pronunciations that other similar names use, but which are not currently associated with Hilary. If you think any of these are valid pronunciations for Hilary, 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 HH IH1 L ER0 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