Woody
Masculine
Woody is overwhelmingly a boys’ name — 4,236 boys against 10 girls since 1880.
Woodrow Wilson was christened Thomas and dropped it. He used Thomas W. Wilson through college, switched to Woodrow — his mother's maiden name — in his twenties, and the given name that barely existed before him became an American name because a president chose it for himself.
How old is the name Woody?
Woody first appears in US birth records in 1882 — 143 years ago. The typical Woody alive today was born around 1954, making them about 71 years old. About 2,700 people named Woody are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Woody most popular?
Woody peaked in 1944, reaching #598 nationally. Today it ranks #7679, 7,081 places below that high. See the whole 1944 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From wudu-rāw to Woody
The story of Woody
Thomas Woodrow Wilson was named for his maternal grandfather, a Presbyterian minister. He signed himself T. Woodrow Wilson from about 1881 and then simply Woodrow, a change he made while establishing himself academically. The name appears in American figures only in trace amounts before his rise; it climbs sharply through his governorship and presidency, peaking around 1913, and declines afterwards. Woody as a separate registered name follows later, peaking in 1944, by which point it was also carrying Woodrow Guthrie and its own life as a nickname. It is a clean example of a surname becoming a given name through a single well-known bearer.
Meaning
Old English "row of houses by a wood"
Woodrow is an English place name and surname, from wudu, a wood, plus rāw, a row — a row of cottages beside woodland. Woody is the diminutive with the -y ending, also used for Woodward and as a nickname. The name's American career is almost entirely downstream of one man's decision to use his mother's family name.
How the name formed
- wudu-rāw
- Woodrow
- Woody
Related forms: Woodie
Pronouncing Woody
WOOD-ee
Two syllables, stress on the first, with the oo of book rather than of boot. Woody and Woodie are pronounced identically.
Nicknames for Woody
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
- 1882
- Most boys named
- 1947109 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #598reached in 1944
- Change vs 2023
- −50.0%10 in 2025, from 20
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.
Woody in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Woodie in English — spelling variant
Woodys among us
people named Woody are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 boy in 170,808 born in 2025 was named Woody
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 Regis test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Woody's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Regis climbed just as high around 1917, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Regis's path sketches the road Woody is walking now.
Woody 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
Woody beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Woody in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US boys given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- It is short, phonetic and impossible to mispronounce.
- The place-name elements behind it are transparent.
- It is warm and informal by construction.
- It reads as a nickname rather than a full legal name.
- The word has an unrelated slang sense in American English.
- The 1940s peak dates a bearer fairly clearly.
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What they receive
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Woody
Masculine · #7679 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Woodys are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 2,700 people named Woody are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Woody in 2025?
- Woody ranks #7679 among US boy names in 2025, with 10 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Woody?
- About 1 in every 170,808 US boys born in 2025 was named Woody — 10 in all.
- Will my child share the name Woody with classmates?
- Woody will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Woody
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Early#7679 · Obie#7679 · Huston#7679 · Knute#7679 · Rance#7679 · Blain#7679 · Doyle#7679 · Millard#7679
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Woody? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Woody and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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