Gladys

81,883 people in America carry this name — ranked #644 of 923.

A name with a settled sense and a settled sound.

Say it GLA dihs

2 syllables · the capitals are the stressed part

Phonetic transcription

G L AE1 D IH0 S — ARPAbet, as published in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. The digit on a vowel marks its stress.

  • People counted 81,883 2020 Census
  • Rank #644 Familiar
  • As a surname 344 ranked #62,792 the other way round

What Gladys means and where it comes from

Latin in origin, reading literally as “lame”.

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.

Gladys through the years

267,452 babies were given this name since 1880. The busiest year was 1921, with 8,837 of them.

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

Most people carrying it were born in the 1920s. 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 Gladys

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

Better avoided

  • Gladys Susan — runs together
  • Gladys Sarah — runs together
  • Gladys Stephanie — runs together

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

Gladys has more than halved in three decades. The people carrying it belong mostly to the Greatest Generation.

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

0.2% men
81,738 women

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

Names about as common

The nearest entries above and below by number of people.

Who has this name today

  • White alone (non-Hispanic) — 33.3%
  • Black or African American alone (non-Hispanic) — 19.4%
  • Hispanic or Latino origin — 43.3%
  • Two or more races — 1.2%
  • Asian and Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander alone — 2.3%
  • American Indian and Alaska Native alone — 0.6%

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.

Same syllables and stress as Gladys

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.

The likeliest full names

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.

The states where Gladys is most common

In Mississippi the name is given 2.6 times as often as it is across the country.

  • Mississippi ×2.6
  • New York ×2.2
  • California ×1.9
  • New Jersey ×1.6
  • Texas ×1.5

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.

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 Latin origin