Cuyler
Masculine · “Dutch occupational surname”
Cuyler is overwhelmingly a boys’ name — 749 boys against 10 girls since 1880.
Cuyler is Dutch, and the uy in the middle is a vowel English has no use for. In Dutch it is a diphthong somewhere between the vowels of house and boy; American English simply collapsed it to the sound of eye, and the spelling has been confusing readers ever since.
How old is the name Cuyler?
Cuyler first appears in US birth records in 1924 — 101 years ago. The typical Cuyler alive today was born around 2003, making them about 22 years old. About 700 people named Cuyler are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Cuyler most popular?
Cuyler peaked in 1996, reaching #2838 nationally. Today it ranks #7194, 4,356 places below that high. See the whole 1996 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From Cuyler to Cuyler
The story of Cuyler
Dutch settlement of the Hudson Valley left a layer in American naming that is easy to miss: Schuyler, Van Buren, Roosevelt, Vanderbilt, Stuyvesant, Cuyler. The Cuylers were an Albany merchant family from the 1660s onward, and several held office in colonial New York. When nineteenth-century Americans began using surnames as given names, that Dutch stock was available and carried the prestige of old New York families, which is why Schuyler and Cuyler both appear as first names. The Dutch orthography came with them: uy, and also ij and ui, which English readers have no rules for. The American figures for Cuyler peak in 1996, in the recent surname-name revival rather than the nineteenth-century one.
Meaningscholars disagree
Dutch occupational surname, of uncertain trade
Cuyler is a Dutch surname, but the occupation behind it is disputed. Proposals include a variant of kuiper, a cooper or barrel-maker, and a derivation from kuil, a pit or hollow, meaning one who works a pit. Neither is settled. The name is well documented as a family name in New Netherland from the seventeenth century; the trade it originally described is not.
How the name formed
- Cuyler
- Kyler
Related forms: Kuyler · Kyler
Pronouncing Cuyler
KYE-lur
Two syllables, stress on the first, identical to Kyler. The Dutch uy is a rounded diphthong with no English equivalent, and no American speaker attempts it.
Nicknames for Cuyler
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
- 1924
- Most boys named
- 200933 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #2838reached in 1996
- Change vs 2024
- +120.0%11 in 2025, 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.
Cuyler in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Kuyler in Dutch — spelling variant
- Kyler in English — spelling variant
Cuylers among us
people named Cuyler are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 boy in 155,280 born in 2025 was named Cuyler
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 Alfard test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Cuyler's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Alfard climbed just as high around 1928, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Alfard's path sketches the road Cuyler is walking now.
Cuyler 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
Cuyler beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Cuyler in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US boys given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- It has a documented colonial Dutch family history in New York.
- It sounds identical to the familiar Kyler, so it is easy to say.
- The spelling is genuinely old rather than invented.
- The uy spelling will be misread and misspelled by nearly everyone.
- It is indistinguishable in speech from the far more common Kyler.
- The occupational meaning behind the surname is not settled.
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What they receive
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Cuyler
Masculine · #7194 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Cuylers are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 700 people named Cuyler are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Cuyler in 2025?
- Cuyler ranks #7194 among US boy names in 2025, with 11 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Cuyler?
- About 1 in every 155,280 US boys born in 2025 was named Cuyler — 11 in all.
- Will my child share the name Cuyler with classmates?
- Cuyler will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Cuyler
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Junius#7194 · Orie#7194 · Shade#7194 · Chesley#7194 · Joesph#7194 · Lofton#7194 · Macon#7194 · Benjiman#7194
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Cuyler? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Cuyler and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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