Mindy
Feminine · “honey”
Mindy is overwhelmingly a girls’ name — 42,615 girls against 67 boys since 1880.
Mindy is a short form with two quite different parents: the eighteenth-century English coinage Melinda, and the Yiddish Mindel — which itself comes from a German word for love.
How old is the name Mindy?
Mindy first appears in US birth records in 1940 — 85 years ago. The typical Mindy alive today was born around 1979, making them about 46 years old. About 40,000 people named Mindy are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Mindy most popular?
Mindy peaked in 1979, reaching #81 nationally. Today it ranks #2387, 2,306 places below that high. See the whole 1979 chart.
Mindy appears on this list:
Where it comes from
From Melinda to Mindy
The story of Mindy
Melinda was one of a crop of deliberately constructed eighteenth-century English names ending in -inda, and its American short form Mindy appeared in the twentieth century. Separately, Mindel was an ordinary Yiddish woman's name that Ashkenazi emigration brought to America and that was anglicized the same way. Mindy rose sharply through the 1960s and peaked in the late 1970s.
Meaningscholars disagree
honey; love
Through Melinda, the first element is generally read as the Greek meli or Latin mel, 'honey'. Through the Yiddish Mindel, it descends from the Middle High German minne, 'love' — the word behind the Minnesang, the German tradition of courtly love poetry. The two are unrelated.
How the name formed
- Melinda
- Mindy
Related forms: Mindel · Mindi · Melinda
Pronouncing Mindy
MIN-dee
Two syllables, stress on the first. No variation between English accents.
Nicknames for Mindy
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
- 1940
- Most girls named
- 19793,712 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #81reached in 1979
- Change vs 2023
- −33.6%75 in 2025, from 113
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.
Mindy in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Mindel in Yiddish — related form
- Mindi in English — spelling variant
- Melinda in English — related form
Strongest US states over the last decade: New York, New Jersey, California.
Mindys among us
people named Mindy are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 girl in 21,430 born in 2025 was named Mindy
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 Opal test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Mindy's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Opal climbed just as high around 1911, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Opal's path sketches the road Mindy is walking now.
Mindy 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 Mindy is headed
Mindy should hold steady through 2030 — the curve is flat, and flat curves are the most predictable kind.
Medium 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.
Mindy beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Mindy in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US girls given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- Two quite different traditions stand behind it, one English and one Yiddish.
- Melinda is available as a formal form with a documented literary origin.
- Short, bright and impossible to mispronounce.
- The two possible parents point at unrelated meanings.
- As a standalone name it stays informal unless Melinda is on the certificate.
- It is closely dated to the 1970s and 1980s.
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What they receive
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Mindy
Feminine · #2387 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Mindys are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 40,000 people named Mindy are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Mindy in 2025?
- Mindy ranks #2387 among US girl names in 2025, with 75 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Mindy?
- About 1 in every 21,430 US girls born in 2025 was named Mindy — 75 in all.
- Will my child share the name Mindy with classmates?
- Mindy will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Mindy
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Maiya#2387 · Rena#2387 · Eviana#2387 · Dora#2387 · Shannon#2387 · Mariyah#2387 · Jeanette#2387 · Yana#2387
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Mindy? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Mindy and another name?
See them side by side — full stats, history and a gentle verdict.
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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