May is a first name typically given to girls, but in rare cases also used as a boys name.
May is a well-known name in the US, but is still special. It is currently only given to every ten thousandth girl, and therefore ranks at 1,525 in the SmartGenius statistics. This means there are 1,524 girls names that are more common, but also tens of thousands that are much rarer. In the entire USA, approximately 25,413 people – children, adults and seniors – currently bear the name May. That is 0.01 % of all living Americans.
May is the epitome of endurance. Every year since first names have been registered in the United States, parents have come up with the idea of naming their daughter May. This means that several girls named May have witnessed historic events such as the first Nobel Prize ceremony, the moon landing, the release of the first cell phone, or the turn of the millennium. The first name May has reached its highest rank of 56 numerous times, but that was long ago before the beginning of the last century, last time in 1883. Nevertheless, the name has been in the top 100 repeatedly. This makes May one of the most popular names of all time.
In years where the graph has no value, the name May was given less than five times or even none at all in the entire USA.
May will be May. Like every other year, there have been newborns named May in 2022 – in fact 154 to be precise, confirming May is still a popular first name. In this most recent year for which US-wide statistics are available, the name ranked #1,307 among all girls‘ names. For comparison, the least popular year for this first name was 2006, when only 75 baby girls were named May.
Well, you might say, you probably figured that out yourself! But what you might not know is: The letter M is a quite popular first letter for girls' names. That’s because 8.5% of all common girls’ names in the US begin with this letter. Only the first letters A and S are more common for girls' names.
With only three letters, the name May is obviously very short. In fact, only 1.0% of all common first names in the US consist of exactly three letters. Just 0.2% of all first names are even shorter and only have two letters, while nearly 99% of all boys’ and girls’ names use more than three 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.
Therefore: As 8.5% of all girls' names start with an M, this initial letter occurs nearly 2.5-times as often as all 26 letters on average – and the most common one of all the girls’ names starting with M is Mary.
If your name is May 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 May, you can simply say:
Mouse
Apple
Yoyo
Braille is made up of dots, which the blind and visually impaired can feel to read words.
May
May
Just use American Sign Language!
These flags are used for maritime communication - each flag represents a letter.
M
A
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.
M
A
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. May sounds like this:
