Colby comes from an English surname, originally from various place names, derived from the Old Norse nickname ‘Koli’ meaning ‘coal, dark’ and ‘býr’ for ‘town’.
Colby is a male first name. In some cases it's also given to girls.
The name Colby 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, Colby ranks 482. Recently, out of every 10,000 newborn boys, approximately 3 were named Colby. In the entire USA, approximately 51,610 people – children, adults and seniors – currently bear the name Colby. That is 0.02 % of all living Americans.
Colby comes from an English surname, originally from various place names, derived from the Old Norse nickname ‘Koli’ meaning ‘coal, dark’ and ‘býr’ for ‘town’.
The name Colton ... can also mean 'coal town' like Colby.
This is a real surprise! Colby is a name that has been around for a long time, but only really took off in the 21st century. In the year 2001, it reached its best rank at #94 according to our SmartGenius statistics. This makes Colby much more popular than in previous generations, where it was so rare for several years that it was not even recorded in the statistics. While the name Colby was observed for the first time ever in 1888, it now seems to have found its place in the zeitgeist of the 21st century. In 2001, the year of its highest popularity, the name was given a total of 3,979 times. Whether this beautiful boys' name can repeat or even exceed its previous best ranking in the coming years remains to be seen, but the prospects are promising given the positive trend.
In years where the graph has no value, the name Colby was given less than five times or even none at all in the entire USA.
In 2022, Colby ranked #528 in our SmartGenius statistics. In absolute figures, this means it was given to baby boys a total of 532 times. No one knows what names (or combinations of numbers and letters) will be popular 50 years from now, but given its popularity in the early years of this millennium, there is a good chance that Colby will not disappear from the screen anytime soon.
Everyone knows him, everyone loves him and still he’s different from the mainstream: Colby occurs in every single state of the U.S. This may sound quite unspectacular at first, but in fact, of the nearly 50,000 different male first names that occur in the USA, only 386 are recorded in each individual state, so the name Colby is definitely something very special. However, at the same time, since the name does not appear in the top 100 most common first names in any single state, Colby is not one of those names that everyone encounters in his neighbourhood, but stands out from the crowd, captures attention and is something special without being strange or unknown. From Alaska to Florida, a total of 50,075 men and boys of all generations bear the name Colby – that is one in 3,333. However, there are considerable regional differences – the name is far more popular than average in Maine, where one in 400 men and boys is called Colby, while it is particularly rare in Wisconsin, where you have to ask an average of 13,201 men for their name to get Colby as an answer once.
Well, you might say, you probably figured that out yourself! But what you might not know is: The letter C is a frequent initial letter for boys’ names. This is because 5.2% of all common boys’ names in the US begin with this letter. The most common first letters of boys' names, by the way, are J, A and D.
With five letters, the name Colby 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.
With 5.2% of all boys' names that begin with a C, this first letter is thus much more common than the average of all letters. And which boys’ name beginning with C do you think is the most common in the US? The answer is... Charles.
If your name is Colby 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 Colby, you can simply say:
Cat
Orange
Lion
Butterfly
Yoyo
Braille is made up of dots, which the blind and visually impaired can feel to read words.
Colby
Colby
Just use American Sign Language!
These flags are used for maritime communication - each flag represents a letter.
C
O
L
B
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.
C
O
L
B
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. Colby sounds like this:
