Crew
Masculine · “The English word crew”
Crew is overwhelmingly a boys’ name — 12,509 boys against 71 girls since 1880.
Crew comes into English from the Old French *creue*, "an increase" — the extra men sent to reinforce a company. From there it grew into the word for people who work a ship, a film set, a rowing shell. One syllable, one long open vowel, and no part of it that has to be explained aloud.
How old is the name Crew?
Crew first appears in US birth records in 1995 — 30 years ago. The typical Crew is a kid of about 4 — this name's wave is very recent. About 12,500 people named Crew are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Crew most popular?
Crew peaked in 2024, reaching #250 nationally. Today it ranks #256, 6 places below that high. See the whole 2024 chart.
Crew appears on these lists:
Where it comes from
From Latin crescere to Crew
The story of Crew
The word arrived in English in the late medieval period from Old French, where *creue* meant an increase or augmentation — reinforcements added to a fighting force. Over the following centuries the military sense faded and the plain one took over: the crew of a ship, then of an aircraft, a film, a boat race. As a given name it belongs to the recent American taste for short, hard-consonant word names, and its use in the US is genuinely new rather than revived. There is also an older surname Crewe, from the town in Cheshire that became one of England's great railway junctions in the nineteenth century.
Meaning
The English word crew — a body of people working together; from Old French for "increase, growth"
The word traces back through Old French *creue* to Latin *crescere*, "to grow." The English surname and the Cheshire town spelled Crewe are a separate line, generally traced to a Welsh word for a weir or stepping stones across a river.
How the name formed
- Latin crescere
- Old French creue
- Middle English crewe
- English crew
Related forms: Crewe · Cru
Pronouncing Crew
KROO
One syllable, rhyming with brew and true. There is no second pronunciation to correct.
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
- 1995
- Most boys named
- 20241,415 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #250reached in 2024
- Change vs 2024
- −4.5%1,352 in 2025, from 1,415
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.
Crew in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Crewe in English — spelling variant
- Cru in English — spelling variant
Strongest US states over the last decade: Texas, Ohio, California.
Crews among us
people named Crew are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 boy in 1,263 born in 2025 was named Crew
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Spellings of Crew
- #256
- Crew on the 2025 chart
- #201
- counting every spelling
The SSA counts spellings, not names. Crew went to 1,352 boys in 2025, but Krew is the same name said out loud. Together the 2 spellings went to 1,828, which makes it the 201st most-given boys’ name of the year — 55 places above the chart.
- Crew1,352
- Krew476
About 1 boy in 934 born in 2025 was given one of these spellings — against 1 in 1,263 for Crew 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 Deandre test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Crew's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Deandre climbed just as high around 1995, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Deandre's path sketches the road Crew is walking now.
Crew 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
Where Crew is headed
Crew looks set to keep climbing gently, with roughly 23% more babies a year by 2030 if the current curve holds. Its history is short or jumpy, though, so read this as a sketch rather than a promise.
Low 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.
Crew beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Crew in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US boys given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- Spelled exactly like an everyday English word, so most people read it correctly the first time they see it.
- One syllable and one vowel sound — nothing to spell out on the phone, nothing to repeat.
- Already as short as a name gets, so it needs no nickname to be usable day to day.
- Sits comfortably beside other one-syllable modern American boys' names without being interchangeable with them.
- It is a working noun the child will hear constantly — crew neck, crew cut, film crew, ground crew. Some families like the echo; it is worth saying the phrases out loud before deciding.
- Heard rather than seen, it can come back as Crewe or Cru. The plain spelling is the most common one, but expect the occasional correction.
- The name's use is recent enough that nearly everyone carrying it is still a child. Adults meeting it for the first time may pause for a beat before it registers as a name.
Nobody names a baby alone.
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What they receive
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Crew
Masculine · #256 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Crews are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 12,500 people named Crew are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How do you spell Crew?
- Crew is the most-used spelling in US records — 1,352 of the 1,828 babies given the name in 2025. The others recorded are Krew.
- How popular is the name Crew in 2025?
- Crew ranks #256 among US boy names in 2025, with 1,352 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Crew?
- About 1 in every 1,263 US boys born in 2025 was named Crew — 1,352 in all.
- Will my child share the name Crew with classmates?
- Crew will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Crew
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Ayden#257 · Nash#255 · Emerson#254 · Marcus#258 · Xander#259 · Omar#260 · Harvey#251 · Brandon#261
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Crew? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Crew and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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