Young
Masculine · “the younger”
Young is given to both — 2,234 boys and 530 girls since 1880. See Young as a girl nameSee other names given to both
English turned a great many surnames into first names and almost none of them were adjectives. Occupations became names, places became names, patronymics became names — but the descriptive words that people were nicknamed by mostly stayed put. Young is the exception that got through.
How old is the name Young?
Young was already in use when US birth records began in 1880 — it is at least 145 years old. The typical Young alive today was born around 1962, making them about 63 years old. About 1,300 people named Young are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Young most popular?
Young peaked in 1880, reaching #482 nationally. See the whole 1880 chart.
Where it comes from
From Young to Young
The story of Young
The word was doing a job that villages needed doing constantly. When a father and son shared a name — and they very often did, because naming a boy for his father was normal — a community had to separate them somehow, and the plain adjective was the obvious tool. The son was the young one, and if the byname stuck it passed to his children and stopped meaning anything about age at all. That is the ordinary life of a descriptive surname: it starts as a true statement about one person and becomes a false one about everybody after him. Long and Little and Sharp traveled the same road; this is simply the one that kept going and became a name given at birth.
Meaning
the younger
The ordinary English adjective, used as a distinguishing byname. It carries no more meaning than that, and there is no older layer beneath it in the English line, though identical spellings arise independently in other languages.
How the name formed
- Young
- Yonge
Pronouncing Young
YUNG
One syllable, said exactly as the ordinary adjective is said. There is no pronunciation that separates the name from the word.
Nicknames for Young
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
- 1880
- Most boys named
- 198237 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #482reached in 1880
- Change vs 2017
- 0.0%6 in 2022, from 6
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.
Youngs among us
people named Young are estimated to be alive in the US today
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Is it right for you
Questions parents actually ask
Fashion outlook
Young sits outside the current charts, and that is its own kind of answer: naming cycles can only date the names they carried up. A name this rare has no decade stamped on it — it cannot go out of fashion, because it was never in.
Based on 146 years of naming cycles. How we read them
The trade-off
- One syllable, no ambiguity and nothing to spell out twice.
- The meaning is transparent and pleasant without being sentimental.
- It works equally well in several languages that arrive at the same spelling.
- It is an ordinary English adjective and will be heard as one first.
- It becomes a slightly odd thing to carry once the bearer is not young.
- Most children with this spelling are boys, but a real minority are girls; either may be taken for the other.
Nobody names a baby alone.
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What they receive
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Young
Masculine
Frequently asked
- How many Youngs are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 1,300 people named Young are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Young in 2025?
- Young is rarely given in the US today — it does not rank in the top 2000 boy names.
- Will my child share the name Young with classmates?
- Young will almost certainly be the only one in school.
More Y names
The most-given names starting with Y, all years combined.
Yahir#814 · Yusuf#449 · Yosef#663 · Yehuda#740 · Yousef#744 · Yisroel#824 · Yaakov#1024 · Yitzchok#910
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Young? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Young and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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