Gregg
Masculine · “watchful”
Gregg is overwhelmingly a boys’ name — 36,512 boys against 112 girls since 1880.
Gregg is Greg with a second g, and behind both is a Greek word meaning watchful. Sixteen popes carried the long form, one of whom rearranged the calendar the world still uses.
How old is the name Gregg?
Gregg first appears in US birth records in 1881 — 144 years ago. The typical Gregg alive today was born around 1962, making them about 63 years old. About 29,000 people named Gregg are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Gregg most popular?
Gregg peaked in 1962, reaching #167 nationally. Today it ranks #12008, 11,841 places below that high. See the whole 1962 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From gregoros to Gregg
The story of Gregg
Gregory was borne by Greek church fathers, by the pope who sent the mission that converted Anglo-Saxon England, and by the pope who introduced the 1582 calendar reform. It is also a Scottish surname — Gregg and Grigg both descend from it — which gave the doubled spelling an independent existence before it was ever a given name. American use of Gregg as a first name rose with Greg through the 1950s and peaked in the mid-1960s.
Meaning
watchful, alert
From the Greek gregoros, 'watchful' or 'vigilant', built on a verb meaning to be awake. Early Christian writers tied it directly to the gospel instruction to stay awake and watch, which is part of why it became a clergyman's name.
How the name formed
- gregoros
- Gregorios
- Gregory
- Gregg
Related forms: Grigory · Grzegorz · Gregorio · Greg
Pronouncing Gregg
GREG
One syllable, both g sounds hard. The doubled g changes nothing audible.
Nicknames for Gregg
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
- 1881
- Most boys named
- 19621,900 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #167reached in 1962
- Change vs 2023
- 0.0%5 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.
Gregg in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Grigory in Russian — related form
- Grzegorz in Polish — related form
- Gregorio in Italian — related form
- Greg in English — spelling variant
Greggs among us
people named Gregg are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 boy in 341,615 born in 2025 was named Gregg
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Spellings of Gregg
- #12008
- Gregg on the 2025 chart
- #902
- counting every spelling
The SSA counts spellings, not names. Gregg went to 5 boys in 2025, but Greg is the same name said out loud. Together the 2 spellings went to 26, which makes it the 902nd most-given boys’ name of the year — 11,106 places above the chart.
- Greg21
- Gregg5
About 1 boy in 65,695 born in 2025 was given one of these spellings — against 1 in 341,615 for Gregg 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 Sammy test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Gregg's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Sammy climbed just as high around 1946, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Sammy's path sketches the road Gregg is walking now.
Gregg 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
Gregg beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Gregg in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US boys given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- Gregory stands behind it with an unbroken record from the early church.
- The doubled spelling has a genuine Scottish surname history rather than being decorative.
- One syllable, firm, and never mispronounced.
- Greg is commoner and will be assumed by anyone writing the name down.
- As a standalone name it stays informal, with no built-in formal register.
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Gregg
Masculine · #12008 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Greggs are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 29,000 people named Gregg are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How do you spell Gregg?
- Gregg is one of 2 recorded spellings. Greg is the more common one — 21 births in 2025 against 5 for Gregg.
- How popular is the name Gregg in 2025?
- Gregg ranks #12008 among US boy names in 2025, with 5 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Gregg?
- About 1 in every 341,615 US boys born in 2025 was named Gregg — 5 in all.
- Will my child share the name Gregg with classmates?
- Gregg will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Gregg
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Garfield#12008 · Chas#12008 · Lew#12008 · Barney#12008 · Dewitt#12008 · Granville#12008 · Cicero#12008 · Willam#12008
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Gregg? See the current top 100.
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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