Tracy

268,037 people in America carry this name — ranked #200 of 923.

Carried mostly by Generation X.

Say it TRAY see

2 syllables · the capitals are the stressed part

Phonetic transcription

T R EY1 S IY0 — ARPAbet, as published in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. The digit on a vowel marks its stress.

  • People counted 268,037 2020 Census
  • Rank #200 Common
  • Per 100,000 88.7 about 1 in 1,237 people
  • As a surname 28,161 ranked #1,227 the other way round

What Tracy means and where it comes from

Greek in origin, reading literally as “carrying ears of corn”.

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.

Tracy name popularity by year

312,318 babies were given this name since 1880. The busiest year was 1970, with 20,242 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.

What goes well after Tracy

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

Better avoided

  • Tracy Teresa — same opening
  • Tracy Tiffany — same opening
  • Tracy Theresa — 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

Tracy has more than halved in three decades. The people carrying it belong mostly to Generation X.

Boys or girls: who is called Tracy?

16.3% men
224,215 women

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

Where in America Tracy is thickest on the ground

In North Dakota the name is given 1.5 times as often as it is across the country.

  • North Dakota ×1.5
  • the District of Columbia ×1.5
  • Alabama ×1.5
  • Mississippi ×1.4
  • Iowa ×1.4

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.

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 same name abroad

  • Zon French
  • Terza Ill
  • Res’l Bav
  • Teresa It.|Span
  • Therèse French
  • Theresa English
  • Terezie Bohemian
  • Terezia Ill
  • Terezyga Polish
  • Teresita It.|Span
  • Teresina Polish

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 Birth Plan Worksheet

Tick what matters, print it, hand it over. Nothing is stored anywhere.

Open Birth Plan Worksheet 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 Greek origin