The name Harvey developed from the Old Breton given name Haerviu, which means ‘battle worthy’, from ‘haer’ for ‘battle’ and ‘viu’ for ‘worthy’. During the later Middle Ages, it became rare, but it was revived in the 19th century.
Harvey is a male first name. In very rare cases it is also used for girls.
The name Harvey 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, Harvey ranks 423. Recently, out of every 10,000 newborn boys, approximately 4 were named Harvey. In the entire USA, approximately 110,819 people – children, adults and seniors – currently bear the name Harvey. That is 0.03 % of all living Americans.
The name Harvey developed from the Old Breton given name Haerviu, which means ‘battle worthy’, from ‘haer’ for ‘battle’ and ‘viu’ for ‘worthy’. During the later Middle Ages, it became rare, but it was revived in the 19th century.
Old Breton was.. a language spoken before the year 1000 in Brittany, the westernmost region of today's France.
Appearing throughout the time in the United States, the name Harvey is a staple in the country: Boys have been given the name Harvey for more than 140 years, according to official U.S. naming statistics. Therefore, Harvey is one of the 442 boys' names, that have been given to newborn sons every year since 1880. Even beyond that, Harvey is a very special name that peaked in popularity over 100 years ago in the 19th century, ranking in the top 100 boys' names in our SmartGenius first name statistics: Placed at #49 Harvey has never been more popular than back in 1880.
In years where the graph has no value, the name Harvey was given less than five times or even none at all in the entire USA.
As many as 807 babies were named Harvey in the USA in 2022, ranking it #377 on the list of the most popular boys' names for that year. However, it experienced its lowest point of popularity in 2008, when it was only ranked at #1,142 of all male names in our SmartGenius statistics - back then 144 boys were named Harvey.
Everyone knows him, everyone loves him and still he’s different from the mainstream: Harvey 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 Harvey 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, Harvey 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 110,803 men and boys of all generations bear the name Harvey – that is one in 1,506. However, there are considerable regional differences – the name is far more popular than average in South Dakota, where one in 400 men and boys is called Harvey, while it is particularly rare in Nevada, where you have to ask an average of 9,588 men for their name to get Harvey as an answer once.
Well, you might say, you probably figured that out yourself! But what you might not know is: The letter H is not particularly common as a first letter for boys' names: only 2.9% of all common boys' names in the US begin with an H. The most common first letters for boys' names are J and A, while X and U are the least common first letters of boys' names.
With six letters, the name Harvey 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 2.9% of all boys' names begin with an H, this initial letter is less common than the other letters on average. Nevertheless, there are of course some names that begin with H and are extremely popular, for example Henry, currently the most common boys’ name with H.
If your name is Harvey 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 Harvey, you can simply say:
Hat
Apple
Rocket
Violin
Elephant
Yoyo
Braille is made up of dots, which the blind and visually impaired can feel to read words.
Harvey
Harvey
Just use American Sign Language!
These flags are used for maritime communication - each flag represents a letter.
H
A
R
V
E
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.
H
A
R
V
E
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. Harvey sounds like this:
