Toni

81,026 people in America carry this name — ranked #651 of 923.

A name of the post-war decades.

Say it TOH nee

2 syllables · the capitals are the stressed part

Phonetic transcription

T OW1 N IY0 — ARPAbet, as published in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. The digit on a vowel marks its stress.

  • People counted 81,026 2020 Census
  • Rank #651 Familiar
  • Per 100,000 26.8 about 1 in 4,091 people
  • As a surname 325 ranked #65,853 the other way round

Where Toni 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 Toni has been given

101,206 babies were given this name since 1907. The busiest year was 1960, with 2,931 of them.

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.

What goes well after Toni

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

Better avoided

  • Toni Teresa — same opening
  • Toni Isabella — runs together
  • Toni Tiffany — 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

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

Boys or girls: who is called Toni?

2.2% men
79,247 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.

Names with the same rhythm as Toni

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 same name elsewhere

  • Toon Dutch
  • Tool Dutch
  • Tonk Lus
  • Tone Slov
  • Tonio Italian
  • Tonek Slov
  • Tanne Lett
  • Nanty Scottish
  • Hanto Lus
  • Antos Polish
  • Anton Ger.|Russ
  • Antal Hungarian
  • Antek Polish
  • Tonnio Esth

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.

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.

Try it Compare Two Names

Put another name beside this one.

One of those is not in the census file.

Open Compare Two Names 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