The name Whitney was originally a surname, derived from a place name. It means ‘white island’ in Old English. Whitney was primarily used as a boy’s name before the 1980s.
Whitney is a female first name. In very rare cases it is also used for boys.
The name Whitney 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, Whitney ranks 700. Recently, out of every 10,000 newborn girls, approximately 2 were named Whitney. In the entire USA, approximately 97,108 people – children, adults and seniors – currently bear the name Whitney. That is 0.03 % of all living Americans.
The name Whitney was originally a surname, derived from a place name. It means ‘white island’ in Old English. Whitney was primarily used as a boy’s name before the 1980s.
Singer Whitney Houston... popularized this name for girls in the 1980s. Since the 2000s, it has become rarer.
#33 - this is the highest position Whitney has ever reached. Not many names manage to reach such a high popularity in even one of the 140+ years of records. The last time Whitney reached this top spot at the end of the past century in 1987 when 9,075newborn girls were named Whitney. But as our statistics show, Whitney hasn't always been a popular name: in some years of record, most recently in the year 1902, it was given to newborns not at all or at least less than 5 times (a name is only included in the official statistics only if it is given at least 5 times in a year). Nevertheless, the name Whitney has accompanied people in this country for a long time. It turns out that this name fits very well in our modern times. From zero to hero – even if its peak is in the past, Whitney has become a fashionable name after all.
In years where the graph has no value, the name Whitney was given less than five times or even none at all in the entire USA.
In 2022, 260 newborn girls were given the name Whitney, making this first name #905. Towards the end of the last century, the name had a real flight of fancy and still captivates many people today − just like the music of the 80s. So, the chances to meet a young Whitney are still quite high.
There are only 537 different women’s names registered in every single state in the U.S., and Whitney is one of them. However, Whitney is not equally widespread in all states, but people in Utah seem to particularly fancy this name – the 2,862 women called Whitney who live here are 0,245% of all female residents and push their name up to #95, easily placing it in the top 100 most common female names in Utah.
Well, you might say, you probably figured that out yourself! But what you might not know is: The W is really rare as a first letter for girls' names: only 0.8% of all common girls' names in the US begin with a W. The most common first letters of girls' names, by the way, are A, S and M, while U, X and Q are the least common initials of girls' names.
With seven letters, the name Whitney has a typical length for first names in the US. In fact, 26% of all common first names consist of exactly seven letters. 52% of all first names are shorter, while 22% have eight 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.
That means that if 0.8% of all girls' names start with a W, all other letters occur on average five times as often as the W. Nevertheless, individual girls' names with W are quite popular, the most common currently being Wanda.
If your name is Whitney 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 Whitney, you can simply say:
Windmill
Hat
Igloo
Tiger
Nut
Elephant
Yoyo
Braille is made up of dots, which the blind and visually impaired can feel to read words.
Whitney
Whitney
Just use American Sign Language!
These flags are used for maritime communication - each flag represents a letter.
W
H
I
T
N
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.
W
H
I
T
N
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. Whitney sounds like this:
