Glee
Feminine
Glee is overwhelmingly a girls’ name — 781 girls against 20 boys since 1880.
Glee is an ordinary English word used as a name, recorded for boys and girls alike. The word has a technical sense that almost everybody has met without noticing: a glee club is not a club for cheerful people.
How old is the name Glee?
Glee first appears in US birth records in 1893 — 132 years ago. The typical Glee alive today was born around 1936, making them about 89 years old. About 300 people named Glee are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Glee most popular?
Glee peaked in 1893, reaching #1437 nationally. See the whole 1893 chart.
Where it comes from
Origin, sound and short forms
Our story of Glee
A glee, in English musical terminology, is a specific thing: an unaccompanied part-song for three or more solo male voices, in several short contrasting sections, which flourished in England in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Clubs were founded to sing them, prizes were offered for composing them, and the form was taken seriously enough to have its own repertoire and its own rules. American colleges founded glee clubs on the English model, the repertoire drifted, the word stopped meaning the form and came to mean the singing group itself, and now it mostly means a television show. The older sense of the word survives underneath all of that: in Old English, gleo was music and entertainment before it was happiness.
Meaningnot established
Not established
The word means lively joy and is very old in English. Whether a family choosing it meant the word, or shortened a longer name, or both, is not something the record preserves.
Pronouncing Glee
GLEE
One syllable, said exactly as the word. There is nothing in it to get wrong.
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
- 1893
- Most girls named
- 194723 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #1437reached in 1893
- Change vs 1970
- −16.7%5 in 1971, from 6
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.
Glees among us
people named Glee 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
Glee 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
- Four letters and one syllable: as short and clear as a name can be.
- It is a real English word with a documented history, not a modern invention.
- It is recorded for boys and for girls, so it does not force a reading on anyone.
- A word used as a name invites comment, and a word this cheerful invites a particular kind of comment on a bad day.
- A television series has owned the word for one generation of viewers.
- The spelling is recorded for a few boys, but nearly every child with it is a girl.
Nobody names a baby alone.
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What they receive
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Glee
Feminine
Frequently asked
- How many Glees 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 Glee are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Glee in 2025?
- Glee is rarely given in the US today — it does not rank in the top 2000 girl names.
- Will my child share the name Glee with classmates?
- Glee will almost certainly be the only one in school.
More G names
The most-given names starting with G, all years combined.
Grace#38 · Gloria#654 · Gladys#3211 · Geraldine#2438 · Gail#8362 · Gertrude#6546 · Georgia#99 · Gina#2076
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Glee? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Glee and another name?
See them side by side — full stats, history and a gentle verdict.
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Cast your vote
Which one would you pick?
Your gut first, the numbers after — the split shows once you pick.
US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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