Grady
Masculine · “noble”
Grady is overwhelmingly a boys’ name — 52,474 boys against 741 girls since 1880. See Grady as a girl name
Grady began as an Irish family name — Ó Grádaigh, the people of Limerick and Clare — and crossed to America with them, where surnames had a habit of stepping forward and becoming first names. It has two clean syllables that land on the first and skip off the second, the same shape as Casey and Riley. It has been given to American boys continuously since the nineteenth century, which is a longer run than most surname-names ever manage.
How old is the name Grady?
Grady first appears in US birth records in 1887 — 138 years ago. The typical Grady alive today was born around 1969, making them about 56 years old. About 33,500 people named Grady are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Grady most popular?
Grady peaked in 1911, reaching #179 nationally. Today it ranks #373, 194 places below that high. See the whole 1911 chart.
Grady appears on these lists:
Where it comes from
From Ó Grádaigh to Grady
The story of Grady
Grady comes from Ó Grádaigh, an Irish surname long associated with Limerick and County Clare, anglicized as O'Grady when English spelling was imposed on Gaelic names. Irish emigration carried it to the United States in the nineteenth century, and there the apostrophe fell away and the surname started appearing in the given-name column — part of a broad American habit of promoting family names to first names. It has been in continuous use for boys ever since, without any single boom that would date it. Its strongest hold has always been in the South and the industrial Midwest, where Irish-descended families settled in numbers.
Meaning
noble, illustrious
The Irish surname Ó Grádaigh is built on grádha, 'noble' or 'illustrious'. The meaning belongs to the ancestor the family was named for, not to the name as a word in its own right.
How the name formed
- Ó Grádaigh
- O'Grady
- Grady
Related forms: Ó Grádaigh · O'Grady · Grady
Pronouncing Grady
GRAY-dee
Stress on the first syllable. English speakers read it correctly on sight, and the spelling follows the sound with nothing left over.
Nicknames for Grady
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
- 1887
- Most boys named
- 20081,196 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #179reached in 1911
- Change vs 2022
- +7.6%851 in 2025, from 791
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.
Grady in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Ó Grádaigh in Irish — same name
- O'Grady in English (Ireland) — spelling variant
- Grady in English — same name
Strongest US states over the last decade: Texas, Ohio, Florida.
Gradys among us
people named Grady are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 boy in 2,007 born in 2025 was named Grady
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Is it right for you
What happens to a name after it peaks
Fashion outlook
Grady 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 Grady is headed
Grady should hold steady through 2030 — the curve is flat, and flat curves are the most predictable kind.
High 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.
Grady beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Grady in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US boys given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- Spelled the way it sounds and read correctly at first glance — no dictation over the phone, no alternate spellings to fend off.
- An unbroken record in American use since the nineteenth century, so it belongs to no single decade and dates a child to none.
- Carries a documented Irish surname line, Ó Grádaigh, for families who want an ancestral thread rather than an invented one.
- Two syllables with the stress up front, which sits easily against both short and long surnames.
- Grady is close enough to Brady and Grace that it gets misheard in noisy rooms and over the phone — not misspelled, just mistaken. Most bearers learn to repeat it once and move on.
- It resists shortening. There is no established affectionate form, so a child gets one register at home and at school rather than a formal name and a soft one.
- In the US the record is essentially all boys. A girl named Grady would not be unheard of among surname-names, but she would be doing something the statistics have not yet caught up with.
- It still reads as a surname to some ears, which means the occasional form-filling mix-up where first and last names get swapped.
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Grady
Masculine · #373 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Gradys are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 33,500 people named Grady are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Grady in 2025?
- Grady ranks #373 among US boy names in 2025, with 851 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Grady?
- About 1 in every 2,007 US boys born in 2025 was named Grady — 851 in all.
- Will my child share the name Grady with classmates?
- Grady will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Grady
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Forrest#374 · Matthias#372 · Manuel#371 · Kayce#375 · Desmond#376 · Marco#370 · Hugo#377 · Miller#369
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Grady? See the current top 100.
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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