Bobby
Feminine · “Germanic hrod and beraht”
Bobby is given to boys far more often — 315,053 boys against 9,675 girls since 1880. See Bobby as a boy name
Robert Peel founded the Metropolitan Police in 1829 and London has called its officers bobbies ever since, after his first name, and peelers after his second. The nickname Bobby comes from the medieval English habit of swapping a name's first consonant, and it ended up naming a profession.
How old is the name Bobby?
Bobby first appears in US birth records in 1900 — 125 years ago. The typical Bobby alive today was born around 1946, making them about 79 years old. About 5,700 people named Bobby are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Bobby most popular?
Bobby peaked in 1933, reaching #401 nationally. Today it ranks #8362, 7,961 places below that high. See the whole 1933 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From Hrodberht to Bobby
The story of Bobby
Peel's Metropolitan Police Act of 1829 created the first modern professional police force in Britain, uniformed, unarmed and organized on a military model, and it was contentious: opponents saw it as a standing army in the streets. The officers were called bobbies and peelers almost immediately, and the first name outlasted the second. The mechanism that produced Bobby from Robert is older and stranger. Medieval English regularly replaced the first consonant of a shortened name with an unrelated one: Rob became Bob and Hob and Dob, Rick became Dick and Hick, Meg became Peg. No other European language does this systematically and no explanation has been established. It gave English a very large stock of nicknames that look unrelated to their sources, and several of them, Bob among them, have gone on to independent careers.
Meaning
Germanic hrod and beraht, fame and bright
Bobby is a diminutive of Robert, from the Germanic hrod, fame, and beraht, bright. The initial B comes from the English rhyming-substitution habit that also gives Bill from William and Peggy from Margaret. Bobby was given to girls in substantial numbers in the United States between the 1920s and the 1950s, both as a name in its own right and as a short form of Roberta and Barbara. It peaks for girls in 1933.
How the name formed
- Hrodberht
- Robert
- Bob
- Bobby
Related forms: Bobbie · Roberta
Pronouncing Bobby
BOB-ee
Two syllables, stress on the first, short o. Bobby, Bobbie and Bobbi are homophones, and the ending is the only signal of sex in writing.
Nicknames for Bobby
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
- 1900
- Most girls named
- 1930262 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #401reached in 1933
- Change vs 2022
- +20.0%12 in 2025, from 10
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.
Bobby in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Bobbie in English — spelling variant
- Roberta in English — related form
Bobbys among us
people named Bobby are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 girl in 133,939 born in 2025 was named Bobby
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Spellings of Bobby
- #8362
- Bobby on the 2025 chart
- #839
- counting every spelling
The SSA counts spellings, not names. Bobby went to 12 girls in 2025, but Bobbi is the same name said out loud. Together the 2 spellings went to 121, which makes it the 839th most-given girls’ name of the year — 7,523 places above the chart.
- Bobbi109
- Bobby12
About 1 girl in 13,283 born in 2025 was given one of these spellings — against 1 in 133,939 for Bobby 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 Ferne test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Bobby's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Ferne climbed just as high around 1916, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Ferne's path sketches the road Bobby is walking now.
Bobby 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
Bobby beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Bobby in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US girls given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- The Germanic root behind Robert is settled and widely shared.
- It has a documented history of female use in the United States.
- The sound is warm and universally familiar.
- It is read as male in most American contexts.
- In Britain it is a word for a police officer.
- The name is firmly dated to the middle of the twentieth century.
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Bobby
Feminine · #8362 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Bobbys are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 5,700 people named Bobby are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How do you spell Bobby?
- Bobby is one of 2 recorded spellings. Bobbi is the more common one — 109 births in 2025 against 12 for Bobby.
- How popular is the name Bobby in 2025?
- Bobby ranks #8362 among US girl names in 2025, with 12 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Bobby?
- About 1 in every 133,939 US girls born in 2025 was named Bobby — 12 in all.
- Will my child share the name Bobby with classmates?
- Bobby will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Bobby
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Lona#8362 · Peggy#8362 · Leda#8362 · Margarette#8362 · Rella#8362 · Evalena#8362 · Vashti#8362 · Nona#8362
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Bobby? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Bobby and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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