girls:
912 births since 1942
#4804 (16th percentile)
boys:
20.1k births since 1888
#814 (82nd percentile)
overall:
21.1k births since 1888
#1760 (77th percentile)
The name Sonny is the #1,760 most popular name of all time in the U.S. on a gender-neutral basis, with a total of 21,055 recorded births since 1888. This represents the 77.3% percentile of name popularity (more popular than 77.3% of all names). For boys, it ranks #814 (82.3% percentile) for all time with 20,143 births since 1888. For girls, it ranks #4,804 (15.9% percentile) for all time with 912 births since 1942.
Sonny first appeared in U.S. birth records in 1888 (1888 for boys and 1942 for girls). Birth data for Sonny is available in 131 out of the 136 years between 1888 and 2023 (131 years for boys and 60 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 Sonny has been given almost exclusively to boys, with 95.7% of all recorded births being male. In 2023, 93.3% of babies named Sonny were boys.
For boys, Sonny reached its peak popularity in 2023, achieving the 63.4% percentile (ranked #334) with 505 births per million. The name was most common in 2023, with 505 births per million (ranked 63.4% percentile). Since reaching a low point around 1998, the popularity of this name for boys has been increasing. Currently, Sonny is at or near its peak popularity for boys, ranked #334 (63.4% percentile) with 505 births per million.
For girls, Sonny reached its peak popularity in 2023, achieving the 6.4% percentile (ranked #886) with 38 births per million. The name was most common in 2023, with 38 births per million (ranked 6.4% percentile). Since reaching a low point around 2007, the popularity of this name for girls has been increasing. Currently, Sonny is at or near its peak popularity for girls, ranked #886 (6.4% percentile) with 38 births per million.
This chart shows the total number of births per million babies in each year for the name "Sonny".
These names exclude other spelling variations of this name. View all variations of Sonny.
These similar-looking names have spellings that are closest to the spelling of "Sonny", 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 Sonny.
Our model has identified 2 different pronunciations for the name Sonny. Click the play button under each pronunciation to hear it spoken aloud.
Our model is 79.1% confident that Sonny is pronounced as SUH-nee, which has 2 syllables. The next most likely pronunciation is SAH-nee, at 20.9% 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 Sonny? These are pronunciations that other similar names use, but which are not currently associated with Sonny. If you think any of these are valid pronunciations for Sonny, 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 S AH1 N 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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