Terry

376,955 people in America carry this name — ranked #125 of 923.

A name given to boys and girls alike.

Say it TEH ree

2 syllables · the capitals are the stressed part

Phonetic transcription

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

  • People counted 376,955 2020 Census
  • Rank #125 Common
  • Per 100,000 124.8 about 1 in 879 people

What Terry means and where it comes from

Teutonic in origin, reading literally as “people’s rule”.

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.

Terry through the years

520,385 babies were given this name since 1880. The busiest year was 1955, with 20,933 of them.

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

Most people carrying it were born in the 1950s. 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 Terry

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

Better avoided

  • Terry Mary — rhymes
  • Terry Thomas — same opening
  • Terry Timothy — 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

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

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

79.5% men
77,384 women

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

Who carries it today

  • White alone (non-Hispanic) — 80.4%
  • Black or African American alone (non-Hispanic) — 12.8%
  • Hispanic or Latino origin — 1.9%
  • Two or more races — 2.7%
  • Asian and Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander alone — 1.3%
  • American Indian and Alaska Native alone — 0.9%

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.

How Terry is spelled

Terry is how 47% of them spell it — 806,152 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.

Same syllables and stress as Terry

Ends on the same sound

Same rhythm — 2 syllables, stress on the first

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

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.

The states where Terry is most common

In Mississippi the name is given 2.8 times as often as it is across the country.

  • Mississippi ×2.8
  • Arkansas ×2.4
  • Alabama ×2.3
  • West Virginia ×2.2
  • Tennessee ×2.1

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 How Rare Is It?

Where this name sits between household and almost unheard of.

Common

  • People counted376,955
  • Rank#125
  • Roughly1 in 879 people

Open the full entry

Open How Rare Is It? 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 Teutonic origin