Bodie
Masculine
Bodie is overwhelmingly a boys’ name — 8,595 boys against 109 girls since 1880.
Bodie is a name with a map reference: a gold-rush town high in California's Eastern Sierra, now a preserved ghost town, spelled exactly this way. It also sits in English surname records, and it lands in the mouth the way Brody and Cody do — two beats, a long open O, an easy ending. Quiet on the books for generations, it has been climbing hard of late.
How old is the name Bodie?
Bodie first appears in US birth records in 1920 — 105 years ago. The typical Bodie is a kid of about 4 — this name's wave is very recent. About 8,500 people named Bodie are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Bodie most popular?
Bodie peaked in 2025, reaching #275 nationally. Today it ranks #275, exactly where it peaked. See the whole 2025 chart.
Bodie appears on this list:
Where it comes from
Origin, sound and short forms
The story of Bodie
The clearest documented Bodie is the town: gold was found in that stretch of the Sierra Nevada in 1859, the camp took the finder's surname with the spelling smoothed to Bodie, and by the 1880s it was one of the roughest boomtowns in the West. It emptied out, survived, and is a California state historic park today, which kept the spelling visible long after the mines closed. Separately, Bodie and Body appear as English and Scottish surnames, and Bode as a German one. American use as a given name draws on all of that, plus the broad late-twentieth-century habit of turning surnames into first names — the same current that carried Brody, Cody and Boden.
Meaningscholars disagree
Not established
Three roads meet at this spelling and none has been settled as the source. As a surname it connects to Bode and Boden, from the Germanic and Old English word for a messenger or herald. As a place name it comes from the California mining camp, named for a prospector whose surname was written Bodey. And it is a homophone of Bodhi, the Sanskrit word for awakening used in Buddhist texts, which many American parents now use as an alternative spelling. Parents choosing Bodie can honestly pick which of these they mean.
Pronouncing Bodie
BOH-dee
Rhymes with roadie. Identical in sound to Bodhi, and one consonant away from Brody — expect to be asked which spelling you mean rather than how to say it.
Nicknames for Bodie
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
- 1920
- Most boys named
- 20251,249 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #275reached in 2025
- Change vs 2024
- +26.5%1,249 in 2025, from 987
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.
Bodie in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Bode in German — related form
- Boden in English — related form
- Body in English — spelling variant
Strongest US states over the last decade: California, Texas, North Carolina.
Bodies among us
people named Bodie are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 boy in 1,368 born in 2025 was named Bodie
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Is it right for you
What happens to a name after it peaks
The Joaquin test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Bodie's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Joaquin climbed just as high around 2008, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Joaquin's path sketches the road Bodie is walking now.
Bodie is climbing fast right now. Steep climbs tend to come with steep descents — the quicker a name arrives, the more firmly it belongs to its moment.
A scored estimate from 146 years of naming cycles — not a prophecy. Great names outlive statistics. How this is scored
Where Bodie is headed
Bodie looks set to keep climbing gently, with roughly 47% more babies a year by 2030 if the current curve holds.
Medium confidence — fitted on official counts through 2025.
A damped-trend projection of the official birth data — a sketch of momentum, not a promise. Every name's forecast, ranked.
Bodie beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Bodie in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US boys given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- Ready-made short form in Bo, which already works on its own as a name and needs no explanation to anyone.
- Two syllables, five letters, and readable at first sight by English speakers — no one has to guess at the vowels.
- Fits the established American pattern of surname-and-place names for boys, so it sounds current without being invented.
- Has a real place attached to it — a preserved California ghost town — which gives the name a story you can actually point to.
- The spelling will need repeating for life. Bodhi, Brody, Bode and Boadie are all in circulation, and Bodhi in particular is close enough that people will default to it.
- It is one letter from the word body, and children notice that sort of thing. Most outgrow it quickly, but it is worth saying out loud before you decide.
- The wave is very recent and rising fast. A Bodie today will likely be the only one in his class, but that picture can change over the years a child is in school.
- The Sanskrit association comes with the sound, not this spelling — if the Buddhist meaning is what draws you, Bodhi is the form that carries it.
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What they receive
Someone added a name to your list
Bodie
Masculine · #275 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Bodies are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 8,500 people named Bodie are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Bodie in 2025?
- Bodie ranks #275 among US boy names in 2025, with 1,249 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Bodie?
- About 1 in every 1,368 US boys born in 2025 was named Bodie — 1,249 in all.
- Will my child share the name Bodie with classmates?
- Bodie will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Bodie
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Maximus#275 · Javier#274 · Otto#277 · Eric#273 · Shiloh#278 · Malcolm#272 · Steven#271 · Benson#279
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Bodie? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Bodie and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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