Becky

68,256 people in America carry this name — ranked #746 of 923.

A name of the post-war decades.

Say it BEH kee

2 syllables · the capitals are the stressed part

Phonetic transcription

B EH1 K IY0 — ARPAbet, as published in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. The digit on a vowel marks its stress.

  • People counted 68,256 2020 Census
  • Rank #746 Familiar
  • As a surname 113 ranked #147,221 the other way round

Where Becky comes from and what it means

Hebrew in origin, reading literally as “noosed cord”.

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.

Becky name popularity by year

86,866 babies were given this name since 1880. The busiest year was 1959, with 4,753 of them.

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

Most people carrying it were born in the 1960s. 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 Becky

Two syllables sit with almost anything — the join matters more than the length.

Better avoided

  • Becky Barbara — same opening
  • Becky Brenda — same opening
  • Becky Betty — 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.

Going quiet

Becky has more than halved in three decades. The people carrying it belong mostly to the Baby Boomers.

Is Becky a boy's or a girl's name?

0.1% men
68,184 women

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

Same syllables and stress as Becky

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 — 2 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) — 87.2%
  • Black or African American alone (non-Hispanic) — 1.7%
  • Hispanic or Latino origin — 5.3%
  • Two or more races — 2.3%
  • Asian and Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander alone — 2.7%
  • American Indian and Alaska Native alone — 0.8%

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.

The states where Becky is most common

In South Dakota the name is given 3.2 times as often as it is across the country.

  • South Dakota ×3.2
  • Wyoming ×3.1
  • Montana ×2.8
  • North Dakota ×2.8
  • Idaho ×2.7

Measured against the state's own share of births since 1960, so a small state can lead a big one. Counted from Social Security card applications.

This name in other languages

  • Rebekah English
  • Rebecca Latin

Forms of one name traced to the same root. Spellings are as the glossary printed them, so some look older than the versions in use today.

Try it Full-Name Estimator

Add a surname and see how many Americans carry the two together.

Open Full-Name Estimator 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 Hebrew origin