Nanny
Nanny was last recorded in 1938, when 5 babies were given it; 53 Americans have been recorded with it between 1886 and 1938 (Social Security Administration, published May 2026).
Girls and boys together; gaps are years SSA did not record (fewer than 5 births).
Births of Nanny by year: SSA national baby-name file, 1880-2025, published May 8, 2026. SSA’s notes on the data.
What does Nanny mean?
Wiktionary, English section
Nanny is “a diminutive of the female given names Ann and Anne.”
Meaning: Wiktionary, English section, as of Sep 25, 2026 (CC BY‑SA 4.0).
How popular is Nanny?
Unranked in 2025
Its last girls’ rank on record is #4,802, in 1938; SSA lists a name only in years with 5 or more births.
9 babies in 1921, the peak
Nanny peaked in 1921, when 9 girls were given it, #3,587 among girls’ names. It was not recorded in 2025.
| Year | Births | Rank | Per million girls |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1938 | 5 | #4,802 | 4.5 |
| 1929 | 5 | #5,079 | 4.5 |
| 1924 | 5 | #5,651 | 4.0 |
| 1923 | 7 | #4,252 | 5.8 |
| 1921 | 9 | #3,587 | 7.3 |
| 1906 | 6 | #1,881 | 20.3 |
| 1900 | 6 | #1,868 | 20.0 |
| 1892 | 5 | #1,594 | 23.5 |
| 1886 | 5 | #1,228 | 34.6 |
Ranks and shares: girls’ names in each year’s SSA file; share of all girls SSA recorded that year.
Is Nanny a boy’s or a girl’s name?
Nanny has been recorded only for girls: SSA lists no boys with the name in 9 years of records (it lists a name only in years with 5 or more babies of a sex).
Girls and boys named Nanny: the SSA national file counts each sex separately.
How many people are named Nanny, and how old are they?
An estimated 2 Americans named Nanny and born in the U.S. are alive in 2026, too few to state an age range. An estimate from SSA’s births and life tables, not a count.
The 2020 Census counted 506 people named Nanny (485 women and girls, 21 men and boys). SSA’s births carried forward to Census day, April 1, 2020, predict 5 born in the U.S. The Census count is 101.2 times that prediction. Possible reasons: the Census counts people born abroad, whom SSA’s files leave out, and it records the name people give, which SSA may have recorded under another spelling or as part of a compound name.
Living estimate: SSA births carried forward with the survival rates in SSA’s cohort life tables (2024 Trustees Report) for each birth year and sex. How the estimate is made. Count: Census Bureau, first names in the 2020 Census (released April 14, 2026; names reported 100 or more times, with the Bureau’s disclosure-avoidance adjustment).
Names spelled alike
Of these 8 names spelled alike, given to 31,735 babies since 1880, Nanny is the eighth most given (<1% of them). In 2025 none of their 97 babies recorded by SSA was a Nanny (SSA lists a name only with 5 or more babies of one sex).
Spelled alike: names in the SSA national file with the same pattern of letters and sounds and at most two letters apart, and Wiktionary’s listed forms; births since 1880 and in 2025, and each name’s peak year, from the SSA national file, published May 8, 2026. Some are separate names, not spellings of one.
More about Nanny and names like it
- Compare Nanny and NannieBirths, ranks, peak and the living estimate side by side.
- The most given names of the 1920sNanny peaked in 1921.
- The top names of 1921The year the most babies were named Nanny.
- Names starting with NMost given first.