Tracy
An English feminine diminutive form of Theresa, meaning "harvester".
Name Census estimates that about 269,440 living Americans carry the first name Tracy. It appears on both sides of the gender split, with 80.3% of registrations being female. The average person named Tracy today is around 55 years old, and the year with the single highest number of Tracy births was 1970 (20,242 babies).
This page is the full Name Census profile for Tracy. Below you will find a gender breakdown showing how the name splits between male and female registrations, a year-by-year popularity chart stretching back to 1880, decade-level totals, the top US states for this name, its meaning and etymology, and a set of frequently asked questions with data-backed answers.
Key insights
- • Tracy started out as a boys' name but over the decades crossed over and is now given to girls far more often.
- • Compared to the 1960s, recent registration numbers for Tracy have dropped to less than 5% of what they once were.
People living today
269K
~ 1 in 1,272 Americans
Peak year
1970
20,242 babies that year
Average age
55
years old
2024 SSA rank
#2,453
Tracked since 1880
Gender
Gender distribution for Tracy
Tracy leans heavily female at 80.3% of total registrations, but 61,471 boys have also been registered with the name over the years, giving it a small but present crossover presence.
Tracy as a male name
- Ranked #3,313 in 2024
- 36 male births in 2024
- Peak: 1966 (3,379 births)
Tracy as a female name
- Ranked #2,453 in 2024
- 74 female births in 2024
- Peak: 1970 (18,465 births)
Popularity
Tracy: popularity over time
The SSA tracks Tracy from the 1880s through to the 2020s, spanning 15 decades of birth certificate data. The biggest single decade for the name was the 1960s, with 132,953 total registrations. Usage has dropped considerably from its 1960s peak. The most recent decade brought in only a fraction of the registrations that the name once attracted.
Babies born per year
Decades
Tracy by decade
The table below breaks the full SSA timeline into ten-year windows. Each row shows how many male and female babies were given the name Tracy during that decade, along with a combined total. This is useful for spotting eras where the name surged or retreated.
Geography
Where Tracys live
The SSA's state-level files cover 51 states and territories. California, New York, Ohio recorded the most babies named Tracy, while Alaska, Vermont, Wyoming recorded the fewest. The average across all reporting states is about 5,973 registrations each.
Origin
Meaning and history of Tracy
The name Tracy has its origins in the Old French form of the name Thracius, which derived from the Latin word Thrax meaning "someone from Thrace". Thrace was an ancient region in Southeast Europe, spanning parts of modern-day Greece, Bulgaria, and Turkey. The name likely originated during the time when the Roman Empire controlled this area, between the 1st and 5th centuries AD.
One of the earliest recorded uses of the name Tracy can be found in the Domesday Book, a manuscript record of landowners in England commissioned by William the Conqueror in 1086. It lists several individuals with the surname de Tracey or Tracey, which was likely derived from the given name.
In medieval times, the name Tracy was primarily used as a surname, particularly among Norman nobility in England and France. However, it began to be used as a given name, especially for boys, in the 16th and 17th centuries.
One notable historical figure named Tracy was Sir John Tracy, an English nobleman and soldier who lived from around 1505 to 1569. He served as a Member of Parliament and was involved in the suppression of the Prayer Book Rebellion in 1549.
Another prominent individual with this name was René-Armand Félix, Seigneur de Tracy, a 17th-century French soldier and colonial administrator who served as the Governor General of New France (modern-day Canada) from 1663 to 1665.
In literature, the name Tracy appears in several works, including William Shakespeare's play "The Taming of the Shrew", where a character named Petruchio has a servant named Tracy.
During the 19th century, the name Tracy became increasingly popular as a given name for both boys and girls, particularly in the United States. One notable American named Tracy was Tracy Walworth Peck, a lawyer and politician who served as a U.S. Representative from Connecticut from 1859 to 1863.
Another famous individual named Tracy was Tracy Lord, the main character in the 1939 play "The Philadelphia Story" by Philip Barry, later adapted into a film starring Katharine Hepburn.
Notable bearers
Famous people named Tracy
People
Tracy + last name combinations
How many people share a full name with Tracy as the first name? Click a combination below to see the estimate, or search any pairing.
Related
Other names starting with T
Other first names starting with T with a similar number of bearers.
FAQ
Tracy: questions and answers
How many people in the U.S. are named Tracy?
Name Census puts the figure at roughly 269,440 living Americans. We arrive at this by taking every SSA birth registration for Tracy going back to 1880 and adjusting each cohort for expected survival using CDC actuarial life tables. The result is an age-weighted living-bearer count, not a raw birth total. That works out to about 1 in 1,272 US residents.
Is Tracy a common name?
We classify Tracy as "Common". It ranks above 99.8% of all first names in the SSA dataset by living bearers. Across the full history of the data, 312,774 babies have been registered with this name.
When was Tracy most popular?
The single biggest year for Tracy was 1970, when 20,242 babies received the name. The fact that the average living Tracy is about 55 years old gives you a rough sense of which era contributed the most bearers who are still alive today.
Is Tracy a female name?
Yes, 80.3% of people registered as Tracy in the SSA data are female. You can see the full per-sex comparison in the gender distribution section above, which includes the latest year rank, birth count, and peak year for each sex.
Where does this data come from?
First-name figures come from the Social Security Administration's national baby name files, which cover every name on a birth certificate from 1880 to 2024. Living-bearer estimates layer in CDC actuarial life tables broken out by sex to account for mortality. The population baseline (342,754,338) is the Census Bureau's latest national estimate. You can read the full calculation on our methodology page.