Honey

given name · Latin script

Meaning: from OE hunig ‘honey’, used as a term of endearment ‘sweetheart, darling’; first attested Geoffrey Hony 1275 SRWo

Recorded as a female name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

/hʌni/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated

Honey is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the Philippines than in any other country.

rarermore common
  • PHPhilippines≈1 in 6K(inferred from the name graph)
  • AUAustralia≈1 in 55K
  • USUnited States1 in 92K

carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.

Philippines (inferred from the name graph)

≈18,000 people, est.

Sources
328 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 6.0K (inferred from the name graph)

Philippines, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

from OE hunig ‘honey’, used as a term of endearment ‘sweetheart, darling’; first attested Geoffrey Hony 1275 SRWo

Sources 1

  • A Dictionary of English Surnames

Attested across 4 languages in the etymology graph.

Often considered alongside

Names that people choosing a name often weigh against Honey, most often first. They share a style rather than an origin.

From the names suggested together in public name-advice forums, in English. A list of what people consider, not a measure of how common any name is.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Honey counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.

Sorted by bearers: national registers' counts, and Mondonomo's estimates (≈, est.) where no register counts.

Where Honey is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
PH Philippines≈18,000 est.≈1 in 6K—Honey103
US United States3,6151 in 92K3.4KHoney328
NG Nigeria≈2,700 est.≈1 in 79K—Honey37
ZA South Africa≈1,300 est.≈1 in 43K—Honey37
MY Malaysia≈1,200 est.≈1 in 27K—Honey30
AU Australia≈470 est.≈1 in 55K1Honey145
SG Singapore≈420 est.≈1 in 15K—Honey23

Exact figures are national registers' own counts, while figures marked ≈ and est. are Mondonomo’s estimates, counted from our sources and calibrated against those registers; hover one for how far to trust it in that country. A dash means neither exists.

Registers cited: Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; SA BDM — Popular baby names South Australia (1944–present). Figures without a register are Mondonomo estimates; see Methodology.

Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table (how that works).

Other names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Honey is also recorded as 4 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • Hindi given name11 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in India, United States, Philippines, Pakistan

    Languages: Hindi, Urdu, Sinhala

    Also written Hôńęÿ, Hoñey, Höñèy, Höñeý, Höñêÿ

  • Khmer given name2 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in India, United States, China, Philippines

    Also written Hönëy

  • Indonesian given name4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Indonesia, Philippines, Malaysia, India

    Languages: Indonesian, Malay

    Also written 'Honey, Hônêy

  • Portuguese given name4 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Philippines, Brazil, United States, Spain

    Also written Höñéý, Hönêy, Hônëy

63 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Other recorded senses(measured from records)

Honey is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • In English, English common noun meaning “honey”; used as a given name in the U.S.

    as a nameTên Họ Người Việt Nam

  • In English, tional name for a gatherer or seller of honey, OE hunig, or nickname from the same word used as a term of endear¬ ment, a sense which was common in medieval England. Vars.: Hon(n)eyman. from Finn, honka pine + the gen. suffix -nen.

    as a nameA dictionary of surnames

  • metonymic occupational name for a beekeeper or a gatherer or seller of honey. Middle English hony (Old English hunig), or a nickname from the same word used as a term of endearment, a sense which was common in medieval England.

    as a nameDictionary of American Family Names

  • From the vocabulary word (Old English huneg). Honey was used throughout the Middle Ages in place of sugar (which was only introduced from the New

    as a nameA concise dictionary of first names

  • In English, A sweet, viscous, gold-colored fluid produced from plant nectar by bees, and often consumed by humans.

    as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)

Ordered by how much of this spelling's record each language holds, so a sense from a language the name is barely used in sits last rather than first.

Notable people with this name(measured from records)

192019401960198020002020Honey Harlow, b. 1927Honey Fisher, b. 1954Honey Irani, b. 1955Honey Deihimi, b. 1974Honey Hollman, b. 1981Honey Thaljieh, b. 1984Honey Davenport, b. 1985Mia Threapleton, b. 2000Honey Hayes, b. 2001

The ten people covered by the most Wikipedia language editions — a proxy for cross-cultural notability, which favours historical and Western figures over equally prominent contemporary ones — shown by birth year. Source: Wikidata (CC0).

How to address them(machine-generated)

FormalDear Colleague,
InformalHello,

Evidence(measured from records)

Attested in 66 sources across 31 countries.

Official registers attesting Honey
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex20203.4K#4,925
US United StatesSSA — National Baby Names (1880–present)2025322—
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex2020179#4,925
AU AustraliaSA BDM — Popular baby names South Australia (1944–present)20161#839

Reference works 7

  • Dictionary of American Family Names
  • The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
  • Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
  • Wikipedia given-name tokens
  • Wikipedia surname tokens
  • Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
  • Ethiopian name tokens (GitHub lehagere/ethiopian-names, 40/60 condominium list)

These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.

Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.

Frequently asked questions

Is Honey a male or female name?
Honey is a female name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
What does the name Honey mean, and where does it come from?
from OE hunig ‘honey’, used as a term of endearment ‘sweetheart, darling’; first attested Geoffrey Hony 1275 SRWo Recorded by A Dictionary of English Surnames.
How do you pronounce Honey?
A machine transcription gives /hʌni/ (IPA) for English.
In which country does Honey have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 18 thousand people named Honey in the Philippines, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled honey.
How common is the name Honey?
In the United States, the national register counted 3,615 people named Honey in 2020, about 1 in 92 thousand residents.

What do you want to know about Honey?

Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.

Please leave out anyone's personal details (see Privacy).

Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/honey

The payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. It takes a free API key (1,000 requests a day), which returns what this page shows everyone; the full country table, every register citation and the year-by-year series come with a licensed key, as does bulk access.

About this data

measured from records inferred from the name graph machine-generated

These figures come from the data snapshot of and will change as it is rebuilt.

Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.

Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.

Cite this page Mondonomo, “Honey”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Honey parses inside a full name →