Irish — unisex name

What the Data Says About Irish

The Social Security Administration has registered 1,447 babies named Irish between 1924 and 2023, spanning 100 consecutive years of U.S. birth records. As a girl's name, Irish currently falls outside the top 1,000 girls' names for 2023. The name reached its historical peak in 1960, when 40 babies received it in a single year. Irish is classified as unisex in SSA records: the opposite-sex variant accounts for 155 additional births since 1925.

Decade-level aggregation shows that Irish performed strongest in the 1960s, accumulating 283 births during that ten-year window. Across the 11 decades of recorded activity, Irish shows a clear decline from its mid-century high. Geographically, the name is most concentrated in North Carolina, which accounts for 36 births — the largest state-level total in the dataset — followed by Georgia and Florida. In total, SSA state-level files list Irish in 5 of the 51 U.S. reporting jurisdictions.

No etymological entry is currently available for Irish in our reference dataset. These figures derive from SSA's annual national and state-level name files, which include any name appearing at least five times in a given year or state-year; names below that threshold are suppressed for privacy and therefore excluded from the totals shown here. The 1,447 total represents a lower bound — actual usage may be higher in years or states where the count fell below the disclosure floor. This page is provided for informational and research purposes only and does not constitute personal, legal, or naming advice.