Greenlee
Feminine · “Old English grene and leah”
Green is named after growing. The Germanic root that gives green also gives grow and grass, and all three descend from one word about vegetation coming up. English has kept the whole family: the color, the process and the plant are the same word in three shapes.
How old is the name Greenlee?
Greenlee first appears in US birth records in 2001 — 24 years ago. The typical Greenlee alive today was born around 2011, making them about 14 years old. About 800 people named Greenlee are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Greenlee most popular?
Greenlee peaked in 2010, reaching #2976 nationally. Today it ranks #8362, 5,386 places below that high. See the whole 2010 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From grene leah to Greenlee
The story of Greenlee
The color vocabulary of a language tends to be built from things rather than from abstractions, and English shows it clearly. Green is from growing. Brown is related to a word for a shining or burnished quality. Orange arrived in the sixteenth century from the fruit, having had no name before that, which is why English speakers called it geoluread, yellow-red. Pink is a flower. Violet is a flower. Purple is a shellfish, from the Tyrian dye. Scarlet was a kind of cloth before it was a color. The pattern is not accidental: abstract color terms are a late development in most languages, and studies of color vocabulary across languages find a consistent order in which they appear, with black and white first and the intermediate shades last. Green, being named after growth, is among the older layer.
Meaning
Old English grene and leah, green clearing
From Old English grene, green, from a Germanic root that also gives grow and grass, and leah, a woodland clearing and later a meadow. Greenlee and Greenlea are English and Scottish surnames from places of that description. The American given name is recent and follows a television character introduced in 1999; it peaks in 2010.
How the name formed
- grene leah
- Greenlee
Related forms: Greenlea
Pronouncing Greenlee
GREEN-lee
Two syllables, stress on the first. Both elements are ordinary English words and there is no competing reading.
Nicknames for Greenlee
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
- 2001
- Most girls named
- 201057 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #2976reached in 2010
- Change vs 2024
- +9.1%12 in 2025, from 11
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.
Greenlee in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Greenlea in English — spelling variant
Strongest US states over the last decade: Texas.
Greenlees among us
people named Greenlee are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 girl in 133,939 born in 2025 was named Greenlee
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 Shaney test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Greenlee's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Shaney climbed just as high around 1972, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Shaney's path sketches the road Greenlee is walking now.
Greenlee 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
Greenlee beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Greenlee in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US girls given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- Both Old English elements have settled meanings.
- Lee is a ready and universally understood short form.
- The spelling is unambiguous.
- It reads as a surname to most people.
- A soap opera character is the main source of the modern name.
- It is rare enough to need spelling out.
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Greenlee
Feminine · #8362 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Greenlees are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 800 people named Greenlee are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Greenlee in 2025?
- Greenlee ranks #8362 among US girl names in 2025, with 12 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Greenlee?
- About 1 in every 133,939 US girls born in 2025 was named Greenlee — 12 in all.
- Will my child share the name Greenlee with classmates?
- Greenlee will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Greenlee
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Lona#8362 · Peggy#8362 · Leda#8362 · Margarette#8362 · Rella#8362 · Evalena#8362 · Vashti#8362 · Nona#8362
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Greenlee? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Greenlee and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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