Boy
given name · Latin script
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Boy is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. In English, recorded as A young male human.
- SASaudi Arabia≈1 in 3K(inferred from the name graph)
- ZASouth Africa≈1 in 3.6K
- NLNetherlands1 in 6.8K
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.
- United States (measured from records)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 286 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 3.0K (inferred from the name graph)
18,094 people, 2020
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Saudi Arabia, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Boey in MY Malaysia.
Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records, and ○ marks a model's transliteration; click a spelling to open its page.
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
A young male human.
Sources 1
- kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
Attested across 3 languages in the etymology graph.
How Boy is read(measured from records)
Boy is one spelling over 3 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 2 of them. Each row is what a source recorded for that language, beside the share of this name’s records the language holds. No single row is the name’s meaning.
- English44%
A young male human.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- Spanish25%
a male stripper
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
- Indonesian13%
No dictionary in our sources glosses Boy in Indonesian.
The share is ours — how much of this name’s records each language holds. The sense beside it is the source’s, quoted and credited, including where it names a gender. We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Boy 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.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | — | 18,094 | 1 in 18K | 153K | Boy | 286 |
| ZA South Africa | #593 | ≈16,000 est. | ≈1 in 3.6K | — | Boy | 34 |
| SA Saudi Arabia | #532 | ≈11,000 est. | ≈1 in 3K | — | Boy | 25 |
| VN Vietnam | #554 | ≈9,300 est. | ≈1 in 11K | listed | Boy | 47 |
| PH Philippines | #221 | ≈7,200 est. | ≈1 in 15K | 17K | Boy | 85 |
| MY Malaysia | — | ≈4,700 est. | ≈1 in 6.9K | — | Boey | 57 |
| NL Netherlands | — | 2,549 | 1 in 6.8K | 2.5K | Boy | 77 |
18,094 people counted by Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex, 2020. 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; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; Top 500 First Names in the Philippines (PSA FOI response, tracking; Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018). 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 recorded senses(measured from records)
Boy is also recorded in 4 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In Dutch, a male domestic servant, especially one with a darker skin in a colony
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
ISO 639-3 language code for Bodo (Central Africa).
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Hungarian, A young male servant, low-position assistant.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In srn, alternative form of boi (official spelling)
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)
- Boy Capelb. 1881GBEnglish polo player
- Boy Edgarb. 1915NLDutch conductor, pianist and trumpeter (1915–1980)
- Boy Lornsenb. 1922DEGerman sculptor and writer (1922–1995)
- Boy Hayjeb. 1949NLDutch racing driver
- Boy Olmib. 1955ARArgentinian actor
- Davey Boy Smithb. 1962GBBritish professional wrestler (1962–2002)
- Boy Watermanb. 1984NLDutch footballer
- Boy Westerhofb. 1985NLDutch tennis player
- Boy van Poppelb. 1988NLDutch racing cyclist
- Boy Hamzahb. 1990IDIndonesian actor and model
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).
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 50 sources across 29 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 18K | #1,710 |
| NL Netherlands | Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018) | — | 2.5K | #593 |
| NL Netherlands | Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (live per-name BRP counts, 1790-2017) | — | 1.9K | #1,379 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 134 | #1,710 |
| NL Netherlands | Meertens NVB — Nederlandse Voornamenbank (all-time BRP bearer counts, 2018) | — | 19 | #15,207 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 18 | — |
Reference works 7
- 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)
- Rymut, Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (10 vols, IJP PAN, Kraków 1992–1994) — every Polish surname in the PESEL register at the end of 1990, with bearer counts nationally and per voivodeship1990
- jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)
- Ismlar.com — Uzbek given-name dictionary (meanings, gender, origin)
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
- What does the name Boy mean, and where does it come from?
- A young male human. Recorded by kaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations).
- Is Boy a male or female name?
- Boy is a male 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.
- How common is the name Boy?
- In the United States, the national register counted 18,094 people named Boy in 2020, about 1 in 18 thousand residents.
- How common is Boy compared with other names?
- In the Philippines, Boy is the 221st most common given name of 486,299 given names recorded there.
- In which country does Boy have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 18 thousand people named Boy, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled boy.
What do you want to know about Boy?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/boyThe same 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), and bulk access is licensed separately.
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, “Boy” — the 221st most common given name in Philippines. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.