Casey
Masculine · “vigilant”
Casey is given to both — 116,675 boys and 78,100 girls since 1880. See Casey as a girl nameSee other names given to both
Casey began as an Irish surname, Ó Cathasaigh, carried to America by families leaving Ireland in the nineteenth century and turned into a first name there. It has been in continuous use since the late nineteenth century — the era of the ballad of Casey Jones and of Thayer's poem about Casey of the Mudville nine — and it says itself in two easy beats, exactly like the letters K.C.
How old is the name Casey?
Casey first appears in US birth records in 1888 — 137 years ago. The typical Casey alive today was born around 1988, making them about 37 years old. About 109,000 people named Casey are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Casey most popular?
Casey peaked in 1987, reaching #80 nationally. Today it ranks #320, 240 places below that high. See the whole 1987 chart.
Where it comes from
From cathasach to Casey
The story of Casey
Ó Cathasaigh was a family name in Ireland long before it was anybody's first name, borne by several distinct kindreds, and it was anglicized as Casey in the nineteenth century. Irish emigration carried it to the United States, where the American habit of promoting surnames to given names took hold of it. The railroad engineer John Luther Jones, known as Casey after the Kentucky town he grew up near, died in a locomotive cab in 1900 and became the subject of a ballad that spread the name far past Irish-American families. From there it settled in as a first name for boys and, from the middle of the twentieth century, for girls too.
Meaning
vigilant, watchful
The Irish surname Ó Cathasaigh means 'descendant of Cathasach', from cathasach, 'vigilant' or 'watchful'. That is the main road into English. A second road exists for girls: Casey has also been used as a short form of names beginning with Cass- or K-sounds, and as a spelling of the initials K.C.
How the name formed
- cathasach
- Ó Cathasaigh
- Caseysurname
- Caseygiven name
Related forms: Ó Cathasaigh · Kasey · Cayce · Kacey
Pronouncing Casey
KAY-see
Two syllables, stress on the first. The spellings Casey, Kasey and Kacey are all said the same way, which is convenient aloud and less so in writing.
Nicknames for Casey
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
- 1888
- Most boys named
- 19904,134 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #80reached in 1987
- Change vs 2022
- +6.5%1,072 in 2025, from 1,007
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.
Casey in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Ó Cathasaigh in Irish — related form
- Kasey in English — spelling variant
- Cayce in English — spelling variant
- Kacey in English — spelling variant
Strongest US states over the last decade: California, Texas, New York.
Caseys among us
people named Casey are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 boy in 1,593 born in 2025 was named Casey
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Spellings of Casey
- #320
- Casey on the 2025 chart
- #245
- counting every spelling
The SSA counts spellings, not names. Casey went to 1,072 boys in 2025, but Kacey and Kasey are the same name said out loud. Together the 3 spellings went to 1,434, which makes it the 245th most-given boys’ name of the year — 75 places above the chart.
About 1 boy in 1,191 born in 2025 was given one of these spellings — against 1 in 1,593 for Casey 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 Sidney test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Casey's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Sidney climbed just as high around 1912, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Sidney's path sketches the road Casey is walking now.
Casey is on its second act. Revived names age gently: the generation that wore them first is far enough away that the name feels classic rather than dated.
A scored estimate from 146 years of naming cycles — not a prophecy. Great names outlive statistics. How this is scored
Where Casey is headed
Casey looks set to keep climbing gently, with roughly 34% 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.
Casey beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Casey in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US boys given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- Spelled and said correctly on first hearing by almost everyone in the US, with no pronunciation to teach.
- In unbroken use as a first name since the late nineteenth century, so it reads as familiar rather than new in any generation.
- Works unchanged for a boy or a girl, and needs no adjustment if the child later prefers Case or Cass.
- Short, two syllables, and sits easily after most surnames without clashing.
- Most Caseys are boys, but a real minority are girls, so strangers reading it on a list or an email will sometimes guess wrong. Families on either side of that split get used to a small correction now and then.
- Kasey and Kacey sound identical, so expect to spell it aloud fairly often — the name is well known, the spelling less automatic.
- A heavily covered American criminal trial in the early 2010s put the name in headlines for a while. That association has faded considerably, and the older ones — a railroad ballad, a baseball poem — have outlasted it.
- It is strongly represented among people now around midlife, so the child may meet adult Caseys more often than child ones, even as it comes back into use.
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What they receive
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Casey
Masculine · #320 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Caseys are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 109,000 people named Casey are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How do you spell Casey?
- Casey is the most-used spelling in US records — 1,072 of the 1,434 babies given the name in 2025. The others recorded are Kacey and Kasey.
- How popular is the name Casey in 2025?
- Casey ranks #320 among US boy names in 2025, with 1,072 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Casey?
- About 1 in every 1,593 US boys born in 2025 was named Casey — 1,072 in all.
- Will my child share the name Casey with classmates?
- Casey will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Casey
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Dakota#319 · Brady#321 · Francisco#322 · Jorge#322 · Cody#318 · Zyaire#317 · Blake#316 · Zane#324
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Casey? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Casey and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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