girls:
128 births since 2006
#5588 (2nd percentile)
boys:
74 births since 2009
#4512 (2nd percentile)
overall:
202 births since 2006
#7537 (3rd percentile)
The name Theory is the #7,537 most popular name of all time in the U.S. on a gender-neutral basis, with a total of 202 recorded births since 2006. This represents the 2.6% percentile of name popularity (more popular than 2.6% of all names). For girls, it ranks #5,588 (2.2% percentile) for all time with 128 births since 2006. For boys, it ranks #4,512 (1.6% percentile) for all time with 74 births since 2009.
Theory first appeared in U.S. birth records in 2006 (2006 for girls and 2009 for boys). Birth data for Theory is available in 15 out of the 18 years between 2006 and 2023 (13 years for girls and 9 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 Theory has been given to both genders, with a slight preference for girls (63.4% of all recorded births). In 2023, 70.4% of babies named Theory were girls.
For girls, Theory reached its peak popularity in 2023, achieving the 1.5% percentile (ranked #933) with 11 births per million. The name was most common in 2023, with 11 births per million (ranked 1.5% percentile). Since reaching a low point around 2018, the popularity of this name for girls has been increasing. Currently, Theory is at or near its peak popularity for girls, ranked #933 (1.5% percentile) with 11 births per million.
For boys, Theory reached its peak popularity in 2022, achieving the 1.0% percentile (ranked #915) with 7 births per million. The name was most common in 2022, with 7 births per million (ranked 1.0% percentile). Over the past 5 years, the popularity of this name for boys has been increasing. Currently, Theory ranks #908 for boys (0.3% percentile) with 4 births per million, which is 58.4% of its peak share of births.
This chart shows the total number of births per million babies in each year for the name "Theory".
These names exclude other spelling variations of Thierry. View all variations of Thierry.
These similar-looking names have spellings that are closest to the spelling of "Theory", in the sense that there are the fewest number of letter differences between the two spellings. This list excludes the 4 other name spellings that we've determined are also variations of "Thierry" based on shared pronunciations. Click here for more details on names that are pronounced like Thierry..
Our model has identified 4 different pronunciations for the name Theory. Click the play button under each pronunciation to hear it spoken aloud.
Our model is 63.4% confident that Theory is pronounced as THEE-er-ee, which has 3 syllables. The next most likely pronunciation is THIH-ree, at 17.1% 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 Theory? These are pronunciations that other similar names use, but which are not currently associated with Theory. If you think any of these are valid pronunciations for Theory, 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 TH IY1 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.
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