Penny

girls’ nameSteadyCompare

Penny is ranked 747th among girls in 2024 (376 births). Its best rank was 86th, in 1963.

Rank in 2024: #747down 71 from 2023
Births in 2024: 3760.02% of girls
Peak year: 19635,127 births
Best rank: #86in 1963
Since 1882: 100,247people given the name

Babies named Penny, by year of birthgirls

The story in the numbers

100,247 girls have been named Penny in the United States since 1882, according to Social Security records. The busiest single year was 1963, with 5,127 births — 0.27% of all girls recorded that year.

It is holding steady: its share of births has moved by less than half in either direction over ten years (rank 809 → 747).

Half of everyone given the name was born by 1962, and the 1960s alone account for 38%. It has spent 68 of 145 years in the top 1,000, 4 of them in the top 100.

Rank among girls, year by year

Higher on the chart = more popularrank (gaps = outside the top 1,000)

By decade

Decade	girls named Penny
1880s	11
1890s	29
1900s	50
1910s	146
1920s	467
1930s	1,128
1940s	13,113
1950s	25,124
1960s	38,219
1970s	12,578
1980s	2,952
1990s	782
2000s	623
2010s	3,023
2020s	2,002

In 1963, its biggest year

Penny was the 86th most given girl’s name that year. The top five girls’ names of 1963 were Lisa, Mary, Susan, Karen and Linda. See all of 1963.

Names that rose and fell with Penny

Same sex, most similar popularity curve over 145 years, in five-year steps — the shape of the line, not the size.

Other spellings in the data

What this page does not tell you. The Social Security data records how many babies were given a name, not what the name means or where it comes from — so neither do we. Counts cover people with a Social Security number; names given to fewer than five babies in a year are withheld. More on the data.