Torrey
Masculine · “Thor's warrior”
Torrey is given to both — 5,066 boys and 1,278 girls since 1880. See Torrey as a girl nameSee other names given to both
There is a family of English surnames that are Thor's, hiding in plain sight: Thurston is Thor's stone, Thorley is Thor's clearing, and Torrey may well be from Thorir, the Norse name meaning Thor's warrior. A thunder god survives in the American phone book.
How old is the name Torrey?
Torrey first appears in US birth records in 1938 — 87 years ago. The typical Torrey alive today was born around 1982, making them about 43 years old. About 4,700 people named Torrey are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Torrey most popular?
Torrey peaked in 1977, reaching #462 nationally. Today it ranks #6446, 5,984 places below that high. See the whole 1977 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From Thorir to Torrey
The story of Torrey
Scandinavian settlement in England left the god's name embedded in dozens of personal names and hundreds of place names, and because Thor-names were never suppressed after conversion they survived into the surname stock in large numbers. Torrey and its variants reached America early, and a nineteenth-century American botanist of that surname is remembered in the Torrey pine and in a well-known stretch of California coast. The move from surname to given name is the standard American one, and Torrey's use as a first name is a twentieth-century development with its best year in 1977. It is used for both sexes.
Meaningscholars disagree
Thor's warrior, or a dweller by a tower
Two derivations compete. The Norse one takes the surname from the personal name Thorir, combining the god's name with a second element usually read as warrior or army. The Norman one takes it from a place name based on Old French torre, a tower. Both produced English surnames spelled Torrey, Torry and Tory, and neither can be assigned to a given family without genealogy.
How the name formed
- Thorir
- Torry
- Torrey
Related forms: Thorir · Tory · Tore
Pronouncing Torrey
TOR-ee
Two syllables with the stress on the first. Identical to Tory and to Torie, which are both in use as separate names.
Nicknames for Torrey
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
- 1938
- Most boys named
- 1977302 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #462reached in 1977
- Change vs 2023
- −31.6%13 in 2025, from 19
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.
Torrey in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Thorir in Old Norse — related form
- Tory in English — spelling variant
- Tore in Norwegian — related form
Torreys among us
people named Torrey are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 boy in 131,390 born in 2025 was named Torrey
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Spellings of Torrey
- #6446
- Torrey on the 2025 chart
- #907
- counting every spelling
The SSA counts spellings, not names. Torrey went to 13 boys in 2025, but Torey is the same name said out loud. Together the 2 spellings went to 21, which makes it the 907th most-given boys’ name of the year — 5,539 places above the chart.
- Torrey13
- Torey8
About 1 boy in 81,337 born in 2025 was given one of these spellings — against 1 in 131,390 for Torrey 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 Elwin test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Torrey's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Elwin climbed just as high around 1914, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Elwin's path sketches the road Torrey is walking now.
Torrey 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
Torrey beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Torrey in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US boys given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- A documented surname with two plausible and very different histories behind it.
- Tor is a strong short form with an independent Scandinavian life.
- Fully unisex without being ambiguous in any confusing way.
- Tory, Torie and Torri all share the sound and split the records.
- In Britain the shorter spelling is a political party nickname.
- It reads as a name from the 1970s in American ears.
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What they receive
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Torrey
Masculine · #6446 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Torreys are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 4,700 people named Torrey are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How do you spell Torrey?
- Torrey is the most-used spelling in US records — 13 of the 21 babies given the name in 2025. The others recorded are Torey.
- How popular is the name Torrey in 2025?
- Torrey ranks #6446 among US boy names in 2025, with 13 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Torrey?
- About 1 in every 131,390 US boys born in 2025 was named Torrey — 13 in all.
- Will my child share the name Torrey with classmates?
- Torrey will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Torrey
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Rollie#6446 · Billie#6446 · Worth#6446 · Blas#6446 · Starling#6446 · Alvis#6446 · Elwyn#6446 · Rollin#6446
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Torrey? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Torrey and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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