Anthony

1,075,181 people in America carry this name — ranked #23 of 923.

Carried mostly by the Millennials.

Say it AN thuh nee

3 syllables · the capitals are the stressed part

Phonetic transcription

AE1 N TH AH0 N IY0 — ARPAbet, as published in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. The digit on a vowel marks its stress.

  • People counted 1,075,181 2020 Census
  • Rank #23 Very common
  • Per 100,000 356.0 about 1 in 308 people

Where Anthony comes from and what it means

Latin in origin, reading literally as “inestimable”.

Origins are a matter of scholarly argument rather than record, and a name can be traced more than one way. We state one reading and say where it came from.

How often Anthony has been given

1,462,787 babies were given this name since 1880. The busiest year was 1990, with 25,180 of them.

80 90 00 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90s 00 10 20

Most people carrying it were born in the 1990s. It has been given less often of late.

Counted from Social Security card applications, so it covers births registered in the United States and leaves out names given to fewer than five babies in a year.

Middle names for Anthony

Three syllables already, so a short middle name keeps the whole from running long.

Better avoided

  • Anthony Andrew — same opening
  • Anthony Adam — same opening
  • Anthony Aaron — same opening

Chosen by sound from the pronouncing dictionary, then ordered by how often the name is given. None of it is a rule — the ear decides.

Is Anthony used for boys or for girls?

99.8% men
1,677 women

As recorded on census returns, not as anyone thinks the name ought to be used.

Names built the same way as Anthony

Nothing else in the file ends on the same sound — a rare thing, and useful if you want a first name nobody will echo.

Same rhythm — 3 syllables, stress on the first

Matched on phonemes, not spelling, so the lists follow the ear rather than the page.

Who has this name today

  • White alone (non-Hispanic) — 54.1%
  • Black or African American alone (non-Hispanic) — 17.3%
  • Hispanic or Latino origin — 21.8%
  • Two or more races — 3.4%
  • Asian and Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander alone — 2.6%
  • American Indian and Alaska Native alone — 0.7%

Categories are how people answered the census — a fact about the bearers, not a property of the name. Conclusions are ours, not the Census Bureau’s.

Full names people carry

The census counts first names and surnames separately and never together, so these are estimates: how often the two halves would meet if they paired at random. They do not — names cluster by community — so read them as an order of magnitude, not a headcount.

How to spell Anthony

Anthony is how 99% of them spell it — 1,087,651 people answer to the sound.

Each spelling is its own census entry — the counts never overlap, so the shares are of the group, not of the country.

Names about as common

The nearest entries above and below by number of people.

Try it Name Matcher

Enter a surname and hear which first names sit well with it.

The matcher is confident about clashes — rhymes, doubled sounds, colliding stresses — because those are facts about the phonemes. Ordering the names that pass is a set of rules, not a verdict on beauty.

Open Name Matcher on its own page

Where this page gets its numbers

  • Counts, ranks and shares: U.S. Census Bureau, 2020 Census tabulations of first and last names occurring 100 or more times. Percentages, bands and groupings are our own arithmetic — the conclusions are ours, not the Bureau’s.
  • Pronunciation, syllables and rhyme groups: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, Carnegie Mellon University. The plain-English respelling is ours.
  • Origins and the forms a name takes in other languages: Charlotte Yonge, History of Christian Names, 1884 — a public-domain work. Scholarship has moved on since, so read it as one reading of a name, not the last word.

Below a hundred people we publish no figure at all — the same threshold the Census Bureau applies to us. What each source covers
Other names of Latin origin