Penny — #746 US girls' name

What the Data Says About Penny

The Social Security Administration has registered 100,247 babies named Penny between 1882 and 2024, spanning 143 consecutive years of U.S. birth records. As a girl's name, Penny currently holds the #746 rank among girls for 2024. The name reached its historical peak in 1963, when 5,127 babies received it in a single year.

Decade-level aggregation shows that Penny performed strongest in the 1960s, accumulating 38,219 births during that ten-year window. Across the 15 decades of recorded activity, Penny shows a clear decline from its mid-century high. Geographically, the name is most concentrated in California, which accounts for 7,547 births — the largest state-level total in the dataset — followed by Ohio and Illinois. In total, SSA state-level files list Penny in 51 of the 51 U.S. reporting jurisdictions.

No etymological entry is currently available for Penny 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 100,247 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.