Although you wouldn’t expect it, Nancy was originally a diminutive of Anne. This French name goes back to the Hebrew name ‘Channah’ meaning ‘favour, grace’.
Nancy is a first name typically given to girls, but in rare cases also used as a boys name.
The name Nancy 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, Nancy ranks 759. Recently, out of every 10,000 newborn girls, approximately 2 were named Nancy. In total, there are currently 980,688 people – children, adults and seniors – named Nancy living in the United States, which is approximately 0.29 % of the entire population.
Although you wouldn’t expect it, Nancy was originally a diminutive of Anne. This French name goes back to the Hebrew name ‘Channah’ meaning ‘favour, grace’.
During the 1930s and 1940s,... Nancy was one of the most popular names in the US.
The name Nancy belongs to the USA like the Constitution, baseball and the White House. Why? Well, quite simply, Nancy is one of only 432 girls names that have been given in the USA in every single year since the beginning of the official name statistics and thus since 1880. However, of course, the name was not equally widespread in all 143 years – the most popular it was far back in the last century: In 1950 Nancy was one of the top 10 most popular baby girl names in the entire United States - ranking #6 on our SmartGenius baby name charts.
In years where the graph has no value, the name Nancy was given less than five times or even none at all in the entire USA.
In 1950, when the name Nancy was at the height of its popularity, 29,681 newborns were named Nancy by their parents - in 2022, by contrast, the name was given only 262 times and Nancy occupied place 899 in our ranking of the most popular girls names.
Regardless of where you live in the US, chances are you know someone called Nancy. Because: There are women and girls named Nancy in every state in the USA. If this does not sound particularly spectacular to you, you should know that 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 Nancy is definitely something very special. In some regions it even makes it into the top 10 of the most popular female first names, for example in Maine, where Nancy ranks on place 8, making it one of the most common female first names in the entire state. The greatest chance of meeting Nancy, however, is in Massachusetts, where one in 95 girls and women bears this beautiful name – that is far above average – in the entire USA it is only one in 157, 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 382 women and girls for their name before you once get Nancy as an answer.
Well, you might say, you probably figured that out yourself! But what you might not know is: The letter N is neither particularly common nor particularly rare as a first letter for girls' names: 4.1% of all common girls' names in the US begin with this letter. By the way, the most common first letters of girls' names are A and S, while X and U are the least common initials of girls' names.
With five letters, the name Nancy 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.
Thus, it follows that with 4.1% of all girls' names starting with an N, this initial letter occurs about as often as all 26 letters on average. Nevertheless, there are girls' names with N that are quite common, the most common in the U.S. at present is Nancy.
If your name is Nancy 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 Nancy, you can simply say:
Nut
Apple
Nut
Cat
Yoyo
Braille is made up of dots, which the blind and visually impaired can feel to read words.
Nancy
Nancy
Just use American Sign Language!
These flags are used for maritime communication - each flag represents a letter.
N
A
N
C
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.
N
A
N
C
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. Nancy sounds like this:
