Gladys is a first name typically given to girls, but in rare cases also used as a boys name.
… it’s a special occasion. That’s because the name Gladys is quite rare in the US. While it’s still a name in use, lately, only approximately 4 out of 100,000 girls have been named Gladys. In the SmartGenius ranking, Gladys is #2,285 on the list of most common girls names. In the entire USA, approximately 216,929 people – children, adults and seniors – currently bear the name Gladys. That is 0.06 % of all living Americans.
Appearing throughout the time in the United States, the name Gladys is a staple in the country: Girls have been given the name Gladys for more than 140 years, according to official U.S. naming statistics. Gladys is therefore one of only 432 girls’ names that have been given every year since 1880. Even beyond that, Gladys is a very special name that peaked in popularity some time ago in the 20th century. Placed 11 Gladys easily made it into the Top 100 of our SmartGenius stats for female first names and has never been more popular than back in 1901.
In years where the graph has no value, the name Gladys was given less than five times or even none at all in the entire USA.
As many as 64 babies were named Gladys in the USA in 2022, ranking it #2,392 on the list of the most popular girls' names for that year. However, it experienced its lowest point of popularity in 2018, when it was only ranked at #3,077 of all female names in our SmartGenius statistics – back then only 45 girls were named Gladys.
Wherever you go, wherever you live – there’s a good chance to meet Gladys. Because: There are women and girls named Gladys in every state in the USA. This may sound quite unspectacular at first, but in fact, of the more than 50,000 different female first names that occur in the USA, just 537 are recorded in each individual state, so the name Gladys is definitely something very special. In some regions it even makes it into the top 100 of the most popular female first names, for example in Mississippi, where Gladys ranks on place 67. The greatest chance of meeting Gladys, however, is in North Dakota, where one in 270 girls and women bears this beautiful name – that is far above average – in the entire USA it is only one in 711 women and girls and in Nevada, where the name is least represented in relation to the population, you even have to ask an average of 13,959 women and girls for their name before you once get Gladys as an answer.
Well, you might say, you probably figured that out yourself! But what you might not know is: The letter G is quite rare as a first letter for girls' names: only 2.1% of all common girls' names in the US begin with a G. The most common first letters for girls' names are A and S, while U and X are the least common first letters of girls' names.
With six letters, the name Gladys is of average length. In fact, 28% of all common first names in the US consist of exactly six letters. 24% of all first names are shorter, while 48% have seven letters or more. 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.
This means that if 2.1% of all girls' names begin with a G, this initial letter is less common than the other letters on average. Nevertheless, there are of course some names that begin with a G and are extremely popular, for example Grace, currently the most common girls' name with G.
If your name is Gladys 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 Gladys, you can simply say:
Goat
Lion
Apple
Dinosaur
Yoyo
Sun
Braille is made up of dots, which the blind and visually impaired can feel to read words.
Gladys
Gladys
Just use American Sign Language!
These flags are used for maritime communication - each flag represents a letter.
G
L
A
D
Y
S
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.
G
L
A
D
Y
S
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. Gladys sounds like this:
