A short form of Andrew, Andy also derived from the Greek name Andreas. Andreas stands for ‘the capable’ or ‘the brave’, based on the ancient Greek word ‘andreia’.
Andy is a first name typically given to boys, but in rare cases also used as a girls name.
The name Andy isn’t among the current fashionable names in our top 10 stats, but nonetheless, it’s still very popular and common. In our SmartGenius ranking of all boys names, Andy ranks 333. Recently, out of every 10,000 newborn boys, approximately 6 were named Andy. In the entire USA, approximately 86,906 people – children, adults and seniors – currently bear the name Andy. That is 0.03 % of all living Americans.
For more than 140 years, parents decide to name their son Andy annualy. This means that there have been boys named Andy who witnessed the first Labor Day parade in the U.S. or followed Albert Einstein's career. The name has 'always been there', but never ranked in the top 100, and thus men named Andy have consistently been special. The name was particularly popular a long time ago in the 19th century. In one particular year, long before the first passenger flight and even before there was the first real radio, parents liked Andy even more than any other time: in 1881, it holds its present record at rank #186 in the list of the most popular boys' names.
In years where the graph has no value, the name Andy was given less than five times or even none at all in the entire USA.
Andy has never been ranked higher than #186. In 2022, he rivaled the 406 names that preceded him on the list. In total, 723 boys named Andy were born in this year. For comparison: 30 years earlier, in 1992, when possibly the parents of the now very young Andy were born, there have been 1,163 newborns who received this name.
The name Andy may not be in the top rankings of the most popular boys’ names, but it is one of the few male given names, along with only 385 others, that can be found in every single state in the U.S. from Alaska to Florida and from California to New York. Of course, the name occurs more frequently in some states than in others – and Andy is apparently especially popular in California. Although the name is not one of the top 100 most popular men’s names here either, one in 868 men in California is called Andy. In total, that’s 18,815 people who feel addressed when the name Andy is shouted loudly across California and who ensure that their name makes it to #191 in our SmartGenius ranking of the most common male names in this nice state. If you asked all people in the entire U.S. for their first name, you would hear Andy as the answer a total of 86,906 times. This places Andy at #312 in our SmartGenius statistics for the most popular male names in the whole of the USA. This is true for all currently living people across all states and age groups – the recent popularity of the name Andy as a baby name is, of course, a bit different, as you can see from the statistics above.
Well, you might say, you probably figured that out yourself! But what you might not know is: The letter A is a very popular first letter for boys’ names. That’s because 9.0% of all common boys’ names in the US begin with this letter. Only the first letter J is more common for boys' names.
With four letters, the name Andy is shorter than most other given names. In fact, only 5.5% of all common first names in the US consist of exactly four letters. Just 1.2% of all first names are even shorter, while 93% consist of more than four letters. On average, first names in the US (not counting hyphenated names) are 6.5 letters long. There are no significant differences between boys' and girls' names.
That means that if 9.0% of all boys' names start with an A, this initial letter occurs nearly three times as often as all other letters on average. And by the way: Of all the boys' names that start with an A, Anthony is the most common.
If your name is Andy and someone asks after your name, you can of course just tell them what it is. But sometimes that isn't so easy - what if it's too loud, and you don't understand them well? Or what if the other person is so far away that you can see them but not hear them? In these situations, you can communicate your name in so many other ways: you call spell it, sign it, or even use a flag to wave it...
So that everyone really understands you when you have to spell the name Andy, you can simply say:
Apple
Nut
Dinosaur
Yoyo
Braille is made up of dots, which the blind and visually impaired can feel to read words.
Andy
Andy
Just use American Sign Language!
These flags are used for maritime communication - each flag represents a letter.
In the navy, sailors of two ships might wave flags to each other to send messages. A sailor holds two flags in specific positions to represent different letters.
In Morse code, letters and other characters are represented only by a series of short and long tones. For example, a short tone followed by a long tone stands for the letter A. Andy sounds like this: