Bailie
Feminine · “Old French baile”
A bailey is the outer courtyard of a castle, the enclosure below the mound. The motte-and-bailey was the Normans' prefabricated conquest technology: a mound of earth, a wooden tower, a palisaded yard, and hundreds of them went up across England within a generation of 1066.
How old is the name Bailie?
Bailie first appears in US birth records in 1984 — 41 years ago. The typical Bailie alive today was born around 1999, making them about 26 years old. About 1,600 people named Bailie are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Bailie most popular?
Bailie peaked in 1997, reaching #1395 nationally. Today it ranks #9457, 8,062 places below that high. See the whole 1997 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From baile to Bailie
The story of Bailie
The motte-and-bailey castle was the instrument of the Norman conquest and it worked because it was fast. A motte is an artificial mound with a tower on top; a bailey is a walled enclosure at its foot holding the hall, stables and workshops; a ditch and palisade surround both. A working castle could be raised in weeks by forced local labor, needed no stone, and gave a small garrison control of a district. Somewhere between five hundred and a thousand were built in England in the decades after 1066, and the earthworks of most of them are still visible. They were replaced by stone keeps from the twelfth century onward, and the word bailey survived attached to the courtyard, which is why the Old Bailey in London is named for the bailey of the medieval city wall.
Meaningscholars disagree
Old French baile, an enclosure or bailiff
Bailie is a spelling of Bailey, an English surname from Old French bailli, a bailiff or officer, or from baile, the outer wall of a castle. A third source is a place name. In Scots a bailie is a municipal magistrate, an office that existed until 1975. The American peak of this spelling is 1997.
How the name formed
- baile
- Bailey
- Bailie
Related forms: Bailey · Bailie
Pronouncing Bailie
BAY-lee
Two syllables, stress on the first. Bailie, Bailey and Baylee are homophones, with the -ie spelling the Scottish one.
Nicknames for Bailie
Moderate
What the data says
146 years of official birth records
The long climb, and where it stands now
The same years in position rather than babies
- First recorded
- 1984
- Most girls named
- 1997121 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #1395reached in 1997
- Change vs 2024
- +25.0%10 in 2025, from 8
Rank is a position, a count is a headcount, and they move independently — a name can hold its rank while the number of babies behind it falls. Source: U.S. Social Security Administration.
Bailie in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Bailey in English — spelling variant
- Bailie in Scots — related form
Bailies among us
people named Bailie are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 girl in 160,727 born in 2025 was named Bailie
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Spellings of Bailie
- #9457
- Bailie on the 2025 chart
- #922
- counting every spelling
The SSA counts spellings, not names. Bailie went to 10 girls in 2025, but Baylie is the same name said out loud. Together the 2 spellings went to 38, which makes it the 922nd most-given girls’ name of the year — 8,535 places above the chart.
- Baylie28
- Bailie10
About 1 girl in 42,297 born in 2025 was given one of these spellings — against 1 in 160,727 for Bailie itself.
Spellings are grouped by a fixed rule that folds interchangeable English spellings of one sound (ck/k, ph/f, x/ks, a non-initial y for i) and keeps vowels apart, so Sean and Shawn stay separate names. It errs towards splitting: a family here is never larger than the truth. SSA national data, 2025. Method
Is it right for you
What happens to a name after it peaks
The Tamyra test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Bailie's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Tamyra climbed just as high around 1958, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Tamyra's path sketches the road Bailie is walking now.
Bailie sits in the calm middle of the cycle — neither chasing a wave nor sliding off one. Middle-of-the-cycle names age slowly and predictably.
A scored estimate from 146 years of naming cycles — not a prophecy. Great names outlive statistics. How this is scored
Bailie beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Bailie in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US girls given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- Two syllables and six letters, easy to say.
- Bay works as a short form.
- It is a genuine surname with a documented history.
- Bailey is far commoner and reads as the standard spelling.
- In Scotland it is the title of a magistrate.
- Several spellings compete for the same sound.
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What they receive
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Bailie
Feminine · #9457 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Bailies are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 1,600 people named Bailie are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How do you spell Bailie?
- Bailie is one of 2 recorded spellings. Baylie is the more common one — 28 births in 2025 against 10 for Bailie.
- How popular is the name Bailie in 2025?
- Bailie ranks #9457 among US girl names in 2025, with 10 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Bailie?
- About 1 in every 160,727 US girls born in 2025 was named Bailie — 10 in all.
- Will my child share the name Bailie with classmates?
- Bailie will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Bailie
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Leta#9457 · Inga#9457 · Delphia#9457 · Cammie#9457 · Lisandra#9457 · Amee#9457 · Venecia#9457 · Annetta#9457
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Bailie? See the current top 100.
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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