Taylor

389,216 people in America carry this name — ranked #119 of 923.

Carried mostly by the Millennials.

Say it TAY lur

2 syllables · the capitals are the stressed part

Phonetic transcription

T EY1 L ER0 — ARPAbet, as published in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. The digit on a vowel marks its stress.

  • People counted 389,216 2020 Census
  • Per 100,000 128.9 about 1 in 852 people

What Taylor means and where it comes from

Reads literally as “of trade”.

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.

Taylor through the years

435,595 babies were given this name since 1880. The busiest year was 1993, with 28,956 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 that fit Taylor

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

Better avoided

  • Taylor Robert — runs together
  • Taylor Richard — runs together
  • Taylor Thomas — 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.

Given to both

Taylor is carried by men and women in numbers close enough that the census shows no clear side. Most names are not like this.

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

24.5% men
293,715 women

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

Where in America Taylor is thickest on the ground

In Wyoming the name is given 1.8 times as often as it is across the country.

  • Wyoming ×1.8
  • Idaho ×1.6
  • Utah ×1.6
  • North Dakota ×1.6
  • South Dakota ×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.

Who carries it today

  • White alone (non-Hispanic) — 77.0%
  • Black or African American alone (non-Hispanic) — 10.5%
  • Hispanic or Latino origin — 5.3%
  • Two or more races — 4.9%
  • Asian and Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander alone — 1.4%
  • 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.

Names about as common

The nearest entries above and below by number of people.

Same syllables and stress as Taylor

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.

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