The first name Ivy originally comes from English and is derived from the name of a plant, which is ivy. It has its origins in the Old English ‘ifig’, cognate with German ‘Efeu’, of unknown original meaning.
Ivy is a female first name. In very rare cases it is also used for boys.
The first name Ivy is one of the top 100 most popular girls names in the US – currently at #87 in our SmartGenius ranking. Over 1,000 babies each year are named Ivy, accounting for approximately 0.20 % of all newborn girls. In the entire USA, approximately 61,315 people – children, adults and seniors – currently bear the name Ivy. That is 0.02 % of all living Americans.
The first name Ivy originally comes from English and is derived from the name of a plant, which is ivy. It has its origins in the Old English ‘ifig’, cognate with German ‘Efeu’, of unknown original meaning.
If we dig really deep into our statistics, we find that there are very few girls' names that have been consistently popular for so long that they have been given to newborns in every single year since the beginning of our records in 1880. In fact, there are only 432 girls' names that appear in our statistics in every single year, and Ivy is one of those very special classics. At the same time, Ivy has never been more popular than it is in this century - in 2022, the name even made it to rank #39 of the most popular girls' names, easily landing in the top 100 of our SmartGenius first name statistics.
In years where the graph has no value, the name Ivy was given less than five times or even none at all in the entire USA.
...because: In 2022, 4,772 girls were born and given the name Ivy by their parents. That puts Ivy at #39 on our list of most popular girls' names. It was much less popular in 1991 - only 239 parents chose this name for their newborn daughter and it ranked 802 on the popularity scale of all girls' names.
The name Ivy may not be in the top rankings of the most popular girls’ names, but it is one of the few female given names, along with only 536 others, that can be found in every single state in the U.S. from Alaska to Florida and from California to New York. Of course, the name occurs more frequently in some states than in others – and Ivy is apparently especially popular in Utah. Although the name is not one of the top 100 most popular women’s names here either, one in 765 women in Utah is called Ivy. In total, that’s 1,526 women who feel addressed when the name Ivy is shouted loudly across Utah and who ensure that their name makes it to #202 in our SmartGenius ranking of the most common female names in this nice state. If you asked all women in the entire U.S. for their first name, you would hear Ivy as the answer a total of 60,083 times. This places Ivy at #458 in our SmartGenius statistics for the most popular women’s names in the whole of the USA. This is true for all currently living women across all states and age groups – the recent popularity of the name Ivy as a baby name is, of course, a bit different, as you can see from the statistics above.
Well, you might say, you probably figured that out yourself! But what you might not know is: The letter I is pretty rare as an initial letter for girls' names: only 1.7% of all common girls' names in the US begin with an I. 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 only three letters, the name Ivy 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.
That means that since 1.7% of all girls’ names begin with an I, this initial occurs only about half as often as the other letters on average. Nevertheless, there are of course single names that begin with an I, which are quite popular
If your name is Ivy 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 Ivy, you can simply say:
Igloo
Violin
Yoyo
Braille is made up of dots, which the blind and visually impaired can feel to read words.
Ivy
Ivy
Just use American Sign Language!
These flags are used for maritime communication - each flag represents a letter.
I
V
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.
I
V
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. Ivy sounds like this:
