Coy
Feminine · “Quiet”
Coy is given to both — 866 girls and 17,348 boys since 1880. See Coy as a boy nameSee other names given to both
Coy is an English adjective, an Irish surname and a name, and the adjective has traveled a long way from where it started: it began by meaning quiet and ended up meaning something close to the opposite of frank.
How old is the name Coy?
Coy first appears in US birth records in 1895 — 130 years ago. The typical Coy alive today was born around 1930, making them about 95 years old. About 300 people named Coy are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Coy most popular?
Coy peaked in 1895, reaching #1123 nationally. See the whole 1895 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
Origin, sound and short forms
The story of Coy
Quietus meant still or at rest. French took it and produced a word meaning calm, then shy, then reserved in a particular way; English borrowed that and narrowed it further, until coy stopped meaning quiet at all and came to mean pretending not to want what you want. The same Latin word, coming through French by a different route at a different date, gave English quit and acquit and quiet itself. Three words from one root, in one language, meaning peace, release and false modesty — which is a good illustration of how much damage a few centuries of ordinary use can do to a perfectly clear idea.
Meaningscholars disagree
Quiet, still — if the English word is behind it
As a surname it is Irish, anglicized from a Gaelic name, and separately English, from a nickname. As a word it descends from the Latin quietus, meaning at rest — which gives quiet, quit and coy by three different roads through French. Which is behind a given child is not recorded.
Pronouncing Coy
KOY
One syllable, rhyming with boy. Nothing in the spelling is ambiguous.
Nicknames for Coy
Limited
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
- 1895
- Most girls named
- 191823 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #1123reached in 1895
- Change vs 2011
- 0.0%5 in 2014, from 5
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.
Coys among us
people named Coy are estimated to be alive in the US today
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Is it right for you
Questions parents actually ask
Fashion outlook
Coy sits outside the current charts, and that is its own kind of answer: naming cycles can only date the names they carried up. A name this rare has no decade stamped on it — it cannot go out of fashion, because it was never in.
Based on 146 years of naming cycles. How we read them
The trade-off
- It is as short as a name gets and impossible to misspell.
- It has genuine Southern and Irish-American roots rather than being a recent invention.
- It is read correctly the first time by everybody.
- It is an ordinary English adjective with a slightly unflattering sense.
- The spelling is recorded for both sexes, and the small recent handful have mostly been boys.
- Two unrelated origins mean no meaning can be claimed.
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Coy
Feminine
Frequently asked
- How many Coys are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 300 people named Coy are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Coy in 2025?
- Coy is rarely given in the US today — it does not rank in the top 2000 girl names.
- Will my child share the name Coy with classmates?
- Coy will almost certainly be the only one in school.
More C names
The most-given names starting with C, all years combined.
Carol#2239 · Cynthia#1013 · Catherine#313 · Christine#1272 · Carolyn#1222 · Christina#770 · Charlotte#2 · Cheryl#4352
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Coy? See the current top 100.
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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