girls:
7.3k births since 1984
#1906 (67th percentile)
boys:
678 births since 1914
#3909 (15th percentile)
overall:
8k births since 1914
#3025 (61st percentile)
The name Whitley is the #3,025 most popular name of all time in the U.S. on a gender-neutral basis, with a total of 7,988 recorded births since 1914. This represents the 60.9% percentile of name popularity (more popular than 60.9% of all names). For girls, it ranks #1,906 (66.7% percentile) for all time with 7,310 births since 1984. For boys, it ranks #3,909 (14.7% percentile) for all time with 678 births since 1914.
Whitley first appeared in U.S. birth records in 1914 (1914 for boys and 1984 for girls). Birth data for Whitley is available in 55 out of the 110 years between 1914 and 2023 (45 years for boys and 39 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 Whitley has been given almost exclusively to girls, with 91.5% of all recorded births being female. In 2023, 82.9% of babies named Whitley were girls. Interestingly, until around 1986, the name was more popular for boys (93.7% boys from 1914 to 1985), but since then it has been more commonly used for girls (92.5% girls from 1986 to 2023).
For girls, Whitley reached its peak popularity in 1988, achieving the 50.2% percentile (ranked #403) with 264 births per million. The name was most common in 1988, with 264 births per million (ranked 50.2% percentile). Since reaching a low point around 2008, the popularity of this name for girls has been increasing. Currently, Whitley ranks #590 for girls (37.7% percentile) with 219 births per million, which is 82.9% of its peak share of births.
For boys, Whitley reached its peak popularity in 2023, achieving the 8.1% percentile (ranked #837) with 43 births per million. The name was most common in 2023, with 43 births per million (ranked 8.1% percentile). Since reaching a low point around 2011, the popularity of this name for boys has been increasing. Currently, Whitley is at or near its peak popularity for boys, ranked #837 (8.1% percentile) with 43 births per million.
This chart shows the total number of births per million babies in each year for the name "Whitley".
These names exclude other spelling variations of this name. View all variations of Whitley.
These similar-looking names have spellings that are closest to the spelling of "Whitley", 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 Whitley.
Our model has identified 2 different pronunciations for the name Whitley. Click the play button under each pronunciation to hear it spoken aloud.
Our model is 81.6% confident that Whitley is pronounced as WIHT-lee, which has 2 syllables. The next most likely pronunciation is HWIHT-lee, at 18.4% 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 Whitley? These are pronunciations that other similar names use, but which are not currently associated with Whitley. If you think any of these are valid pronunciations for Whitley, 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 IH1 T L 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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