girls:
97.2k births since 1936
#379 (93rd percentile)
boys:
6k births since 1884
#1527 (67th percentile)
overall:
103.2k births since 1884
#667 (91st percentile)
The name Whitney is the #667 most popular name of all time in the U.S. on a gender-neutral basis, with a total of 103,150 recorded births since 1884. This represents the 91.4% percentile of name popularity (more popular than 91.4% of all names). For girls, it ranks #379 (93.4% percentile) for all time with 97,184 births since 1936. For boys, it ranks #1,527 (66.7% percentile) for all time with 5,966 births since 1884.
Whitney first appeared in U.S. birth records in 1884 (1884 for boys and 1936 for girls). Birth data for Whitney is available in 127 out of the 140 years between 1884 and 2023 (127 years for boys and 87 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 Whitney has been given almost exclusively to girls, with 94.2% of all recorded births being female. In 2023, 94.2% of babies named Whitney were girls. Interestingly, until around 1963, the name was more popular for boys (81.8% boys from 1884 to 1962), but since then it has been more commonly used for girls (96.4% girls from 1963 to 2023).
For girls, Whitney reached its peak popularity in 1986, achieving the 96.2% percentile (ranked #32) with 5,168 births per million. The name was most common in 1986, with 5,168 births per million (ranked 96.2% percentile). Since reaching a high point in 2012, the popularity of this name for girls has been declining. Currently, Whitney ranks #694 for girls (26.7% percentile) with 150 births per million, which is 2.9% of its peak share of births.
For boys, Whitney reached its peak popularity in 1986, achieving the 31.4% percentile (ranked #484) with 127 births per million. The name was most common in 1986, with 127 births per million (ranked 31.4% percentile). Since reaching a low point around 2019, the popularity of this name for boys has been increasing. Currently, Whitney ranks #900 for boys (1.2% percentile) with 9 births per million, which is 6.9% of its peak share of births.
This chart shows the total number of births per million babies in each year for the name "Whitney".
These names exclude other spelling variations of this name. View all variations of Whitney.
These similar-looking names have spellings that are closest to the spelling of "Whitney", 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 Whitney.
Our model has identified 2 different pronunciations for the name Whitney. Click the play button under each pronunciation to hear it spoken aloud.
Our model is 85.7% confident that Whitney is pronounced as WIHT-nee, which has 2 syllables. The next most likely pronunciation is HWIHT-nee, at 14.3% 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 Whitney? These are pronunciations that other similar names use, but which are not currently associated with Whitney. If you think any of these are valid pronunciations for Whitney, 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 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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