Winsley
Feminine · “friend's meadow”
Winsley is overwhelmingly a girls’ name — 349 girls against 6 boys since 1880.
Winsley joins the Old English wine — friend — to leah, a clearing, and both elements are genuine even where the compound is modern.
How old is the name Winsley?
Winsley first appears in US birth records in 2017 — 8 years ago. Winsley is overwhelmingly a brand-new baby name right now — most Winsleys are still in diapers. About 300 people named Winsley are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Winsley most popular?
Winsley peaked in 2025, reaching #1818 nationally. Today it ranks #1818, exactly where it peaked. See the whole 2025 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From wine leah to Winsley
Our story of Winsley
Our story of Winsley is a story of two old words meeting in a new place. Wine, the Old English for a friend, closes a dozen genuine Anglo-Saxon names; leah, a woodland clearing, ends hundreds of English place names. Neither has been joined this way in the historical record. American naming of the 2010s put them together anyway, alongside Kinsley, Emsley and Ainsley, and Winsley appears in the registers from that decade. The parts are ancient; the joining is not.
Meaningscholars disagree
friend's meadow
The likeliest reading joins the Old English wine, 'friend', to leah, 'wood' or 'clearing'. The wine element closes Edwin, Godwin and Baldwin. A second route treats Winsley as a modern American coinage on the Win- front and -sley ending. Both are plausible.
How the name formed
- wine leah
- Winsley
Related forms: Winslee · Ainsley · Kinsley
Pronouncing Winsley
WINZ-lee
Two syllables, stress on the first. Winsley and Winslee are said identically.
Nicknames for Winsley
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
- 2017
- Most girls named
- 2025110 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #1818reached in 2025
- Change vs 2024
- +129.2%110 in 2025, from 48
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.
Winsley in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Winslee in English — spelling variant
- Ainsley in English — related form
- Kinsley in English — related form
Strongest US states over the last decade: Ohio, Texas, Kentucky.
Winsleys among us
people named Winsley are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 girl in 14,612 born in 2025 was named Winsley
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 Jaymee test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Winsley's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Jaymee climbed just as high around 1992, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Jaymee's path sketches the road Winsley is walking now.
Winsley is climbing fast right now. Steep climbs tend to come with steep descents — the quicker a name arrives, the more firmly it belongs to its moment.
A scored estimate from 146 years of naming cycles — not a prophecy. Great names outlive statistics. How this is scored
Where Winsley is headed
Winsley looks set to keep climbing gently, with roughly 16% more babies a year by 2030 if the current curve holds. Its history is short or jumpy, though, so read this as a sketch rather than a promise.
Low 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.
Winsley beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Winsley in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US girls given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- The friend's-meadow reading is warm and both elements are genuine Old English.
- Winnie is available as a short form that is fashionable again.
- Two clean syllables with no pronunciation risk.
- The compound is not attested historically, only its parts.
- Kinsley and Ainsley are close enough to cause confusion.
- It is very new and will need spelling out.
Nobody names a baby alone.
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What they receive
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Winsley
Feminine · #1818 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Winsleys are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 300 people named Winsley are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Winsley in 2025?
- Winsley ranks #1818 among US girl names in 2025, with 110 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Winsley?
- About 1 in every 14,612 US girls born in 2025 was named Winsley — 110 in all.
- Will my child share the name Winsley with classmates?
- Winsley will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Winsley
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Kailyn#1818 · Story#1818 · Belinda#1818 · Jaisley#1818 · Adah#1818 · Lotus#1818 · Nailah#1818 · Saraya#1818
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Winsley? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Winsley and another name?
See them side by side — full stats, history and a gentle verdict.
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Weighing a whole shortlist? Add the rest in the builder, or settle it with a bracket.
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Which one would you pick?
Your gut first, the numbers after — the split shows once you pick.
US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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