Nelly — #1354 US girls' name

What the Data Says About Nelly

The Social Security Administration has registered 7,619 babies named Nelly between 1882 and 2024, spanning 143 consecutive years of U.S. birth records. As a girl's name, Nelly currently holds the #1354 rank among girls for 2024. The name reached its historical peak in 2007, when 208 babies received it in a single year.

Decade-level aggregation shows that Nelly performed strongest in the 2000s, accumulating 1,596 births during that ten-year window. Across the 15 decades of recorded activity, Nelly shows notable generational variation in parental adoption. Geographically, the name is most concentrated in California, which accounts for 1,798 births — the largest state-level total in the dataset — followed by Texas and New York. In total, SSA state-level files list Nelly in 20 of the 51 U.S. reporting jurisdictions.

No etymological entry is currently available for Nelly 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 7,619 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.