The name Molly is a diminutive of the name Mary, which means ‘bitter’ or ‘sea of bitterness’ in Hebrew. It is a very popular name in English-speaking countries, and has been used since the Middle Ages.
Molly is a female first name. In very rare cases it is also used for boys.
The name Molly 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 girls names, Molly ranks 135. Recently, out of every 10,000 newborn girls, approximately 13 were named Molly. In the entire USA, approximately 166,561 people – children, adults and seniors – currently bear the name Molly. That is 0.05 % of all living Americans.
The name Molly is a diminutive of the name Mary, which means ‘bitter’ or ‘sea of bitterness’ in Hebrew. It is a very popular name in English-speaking countries, and has been used since the Middle Ages.
What is a diminutive? A diminutive is a root word that has been modified to convey a slighter degree of its root meaning, either to convey the smallness of an object, or to convey a sense of intimacy or endearment.
Appearing throughout the time in the United States, the name Molly is a staple in the country: Girls have been given the name Molly for more than 140 years, according to official U.S. naming statistics. Molly is therefore one of only 432 girls’ names that have been given every year since 1880. Even beyond that, Molly is a very special name, which reached its peak of popularity only in the last quarter of the 20th century, ranking in the top 100 girls' names in our SmartGenius statistics: With position 70 Molly has never been more popular than back in 1991.
In years where the graph has no value, the name Molly was given less than five times or even none at all in the entire USA.
As many as 1,474 babies were named Molly in the USA in 2022, ranking it #189 on the list of the most popular girls' names for that year. However, it experienced its lowest point of popularity in 1898, when it was only ranked at #468 of all female names in our SmartGenius statistics – back then only 39 girls were named Molly.
Wherever you go, wherever you live – there’s a good chance to meet Molly. Because: There are women and girls named Molly 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 Molly 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 Alaska, where Molly ranks on place 96. The greatest chance of meeting Molly, however, is in New Hampshire, where one in 337 girls and women bears this beautiful name – that is far above average – in the entire USA it is only one in 926 women and girls and in Hawaii, where the name is least represented in relation to the population, you even have to ask an average of 4,326 women and girls for their name before you once get Molly as an answer.
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 five letters, the name Molly 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.
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 Molly 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 Molly, you can simply say:
Mouse
Orange
Lion
Lion
Yoyo
Braille is made up of dots, which the blind and visually impaired can feel to read words.
Molly
Molly
Just use American Sign Language!
These flags are used for maritime communication - each flag represents a letter.
M
O
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.
M
O
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. Molly sounds like this:
