boys:
185 births since 1948
#4401 (4th percentile)
overall:
185 births since 1948
#7554 (2nd percentile)
The name Whalen is the #7,554 most popular name of all time in the U.S. on a gender-neutral basis, with a total of 185 recorded births since 1948. This represents the 2.4% percentile of name popularity (more popular than 2.4% of all names). For boys, it ranks #4,401 (4.0% percentile) for all time with 185 births since 1948.
Whalen first appeared in U.S. birth records in 1948 (first recorded for boys in 1948). Birth data for Whalen is available in 24 out of the 76 years between 1948 and 2023. 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.
For boys, Whalen reached its peak popularity in 2021, achieving the 1.0% percentile (ranked #921) with 7 births per million. The name was most common in 2021, with 7 births per million (ranked 1.0% percentile). Despite a peak around 2017, the name has seen a recent rise in popularity for boys. Currently, Whalen is at or near its peak popularity for boys, ranked #903 (0.9% percentile) with 7 births per million.
This chart shows the total number of births per million babies in each year for the name "Whalen".
These names exclude other spelling variations of Waylon. View all variations of Waylon.
These similar-looking names have spellings that are closest to the spelling of "Whalen", in the sense that there are the fewest number of letter differences between the two spellings. This list excludes the 16 other name spellings that we've determined are also variations of "Waylon" based on shared pronunciations. Click here for more details on names that are pronounced like Waylon..
Our model has identified 2 different pronunciations for the name Whalen. Click the play button under each pronunciation to hear it spoken aloud.
Our model is 75.6% confident that Whalen is pronounced as WAY-luhn, which has 2 syllables. The next most likely pronunciation is HWAY-luhn, at 24.4% 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 Whalen? These are pronunciations that other similar names use, but which are not currently associated with Whalen. If you think any of these are valid pronunciations for Whalen, 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 W EY1 L AH0 N) 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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