Billy is a first name typically given to boys, but in rare cases also used as a girls name.
The name Billy 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, Billy ranks 781. Recently, out of every 10,000 newborn boys, approximately 2 were named Billy. In total, there are currently 382,347 people – children, adults and seniors – named Billy living in the United States, which is approximately 0.11 % of the entire population.
#19 - this is the highest position Billy has ever reached. Most names never manage to reach such high popularity in even one of the 143 years of records.The last time Billy reached this top position was in the last century, in 1935, when 9,344 newborn boys were named Billy. But as our statistics show, Billy has not always been a popular name: in some years of records, lastly in the year 1883, it was either not given to newborns at all or less than 5 times (a name is only included in the official statistics if it is given at least 5 times in a year). Even today it's not at the peak of its popularity, nevertheless Billy is still the first choice of some parents every year as the most beautiful first name for their newborn sons.
In years where the graph has no value, the name Billy was given less than five times or even none at all in the entire USA.
In 2022, 231 newborns were given the name Billy, making them rank #913. Although the name Billy was more popular in the last century than it is today, it is still common and for some parents it is the name of choice for their sons. So the chances of an encounter with a young Billy are still there in our contemporary times.
Billy is one of the most common names in the U.S. – in all states combined, 382,347 people would currently turn around if you called out BILLY really loud. Across all states and age groups, this lands Billy on position 82 in our SmartGenius ranking of the top male names – of course, the current popularity as a baby name for newborns looks somewhat different, as you can see from the statistics above. With so many people named Billy, it’s no surprise that the name is widely used in every single state in the U.S., but would you have guessed that Billy is especially popular in Arkansas? Here, 1,19% of all male residents bear the name Billy – that is a total of 20,714 men with this popular name and no other state has as many men named Billy relative to its population. But that’s not all the popularity: In Arkansas Billy even belongs to the top 10 of all male names – the 20,714 men called Billyelevate their name up to place #8 in the SmartGenius ranking of the most common male names for Arkansas.
Well, you might say, you probably figured that out yourself! But what you might not know is: The letter B is neither particularly common nor particularly rare as a first letter for boys' names: 4.2% of all common boys' names in the US begin with this letter. The most common first letters of boys' names are J and A, while X and U are the least common initials of boys' names.
With five letters, the name Billy is comparatively short. In fact, 17.0% of all common first names in the US consist of exactly five letters. Only 7% of all first names are even shorter, while 75% have more than five 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.
Thus, it follows that if 4.2% of all boys' names start with a B, this initial letter occurs about as often as all 26 letters on average. And maybe interesting to know: Brian is the boys’ name starting with B, which is the most common of all.
If your name is Billy 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 Billy, you can simply say:
Butterfly
Igloo
Lion
Lion
Yoyo
Braille is made up of dots, which the blind and visually impaired can feel to read words.
Billy
Billy
Just use American Sign Language!
These flags are used for maritime communication - each flag represents a letter.
B
I
L
L
Y
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.
B
I
L
L
Y
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. Billy sounds like this:
