Woods
Masculine · “of the woods”
Woods is overwhelmingly a boys’ name — 688 boys against 11 girls since 1880.
Woods began as a way of saying where a family lived: by the trees, at the edge of the wood. It traveled from medieval English record-keeping into the surname column, and more recently onto the first-name line, where it lands in one clean syllable that no one has to ask you to repeat.
How old is the name Woods?
Woods first appears in US birth records in 1912 — 113 years ago. The typical Woods is a kid of about 3 — this name's wave is very recent. About 700 people named Woods are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Woods most popular?
Woods peaked in 2025, reaching #1466 nationally. Today it ranks #1466, exactly where it peaked. See the whole 2025 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From Middle English wode to Woods
The story of Woods
In medieval England, before fixed surnames, people were identified by where they stood: atte Wode, at the wood. Those descriptions hardened into the surnames Wood and Woods, and both crossed the Atlantic in quantity with English, Scottish and Irish emigration. In Ireland, clerks and census-takers also used Woods to anglicize Gaelic names containing coill, 'wood', which is why the spelling covers more than one family history. Its use as a given name belongs to the American habit of moving surnames to the front — a wave that is still cresting rather than cresting long ago.
Meaning
of the woods; dweller by the wood
The English surname comes from Middle English wode, 'wood, forest', with the -s marking descent or association — a family known for living beside woodland. In Ireland the same spelling was also used to render Gaelic surnames built on coill, 'wood', so some Woods lines reach the word by a different road.
How the name formed
- Middle English wode
- atte Wode
- Wood
- Woods
Related forms: Wood · Ó Coill
Pronouncing Woods
WOODZ
One syllable, rhyming with 'goods'. The vowel is the short oo of 'good', not the long oo of 'food'. Spelling and sound match, so it survives a phone call intact.
Nicknames for Woods
High
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
- 1912
- Most boys named
- 2025121 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #1466reached in 2025
- Change vs 2024
- +28.7%121 in 2025, from 94
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.
Woods in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Wood in English — related form
- Ó Coill in Irish — related form
Strongest US states over the last decade: Texas, North Carolina, California.
Woodss among us
people named Woods are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 boy in 14,116 born in 2025 was named Woods
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 Mathieu test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Woods's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Mathieu climbed just as high around 1998, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Mathieu's path sketches the road Woods is walking now.
Woods 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 Woods is headed
Woods looks set to keep climbing gently, with roughly 43% 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.
Woods beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Woods in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US boys given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- Spelled the way it sounds and already familiar as a surname, so it rarely needs repeating or correcting.
- One syllable, which sits easily in front of longer middle and last names.
- Comes with a long-established short form, Woody, that also stands alone as a name.
- Rests on a documented English and Irish surname line stretching back to medieval records.
- Nature-word plainness without being a coined spelling.
- It reads as a surname to most American ears, so forms, teachers and roll calls may briefly place it in the wrong column. Introductions sometimes need a beat of clarification.
- The surname carries one very famous sporting bearer, and some people will make that association first.
- The obvious nickname, Woody, has both a beloved cartoon cowboy and a piece of adolescent slang attached to it — worth knowing in advance rather than discovering later.
- A child named Woods will likely be the only one anywhere nearby, which cuts both ways: no shared name, and no template for how people expect him to be.
Nobody names a baby alone.
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What they receive
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Woods
Masculine · #1466 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Woodss are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 700 people named Woods are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Woods in 2025?
- Woods ranks #1466 among US boy names in 2025, with 121 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Woods?
- About 1 in every 14,116 US boys born in 2025 was named Woods — 121 in all.
- Will my child share the name Woods with classmates?
- Woods will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Woods
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Akiva#1466 · Rodolfo#1466 · Joao#1466 · Jetson#1466 · Monte#1466 · Calloway#1466 · Sire#1466 · Malek#1466
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Woods? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Woods and another name?
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Which one would you pick?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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