Bobby
given name · Latin script
Meaning: Teutonic; diminutive of Robert, famous, bright fame (Baby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…)
Used for both men and women, depending on the country· national registers that list names by sex disagree
- United States (Census Bureau, 2020): listed as male
- Netherlands (Meertens NVB): listed as male
- United Kingdom (ONS, 2024): listed as male
- Finland (DVV): listed under both sexes
(measured from records)Officially recorded in 41 countries · latest register: SSA, 2025
/ˈbɑbi/(recorded in a dictionary) English · from Wiktionary
Bobby is a given name used for both men and women, depending on the country, written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country: 163,860 people, counted by the Census Bureau in 2020. Bobby is also written בוב in Hebrew and 바비 in Korean (Hangul).
- SGSingapore≈1 in 980(inferred from the name graph)
- IEIreland≈1 in 1.1K
- PHPhilippines≈1 in 1.7K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Bobby itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. Countries with no figure are shown too: flat where a national register lists the name without counting it, hatched where only our records hold it. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United States (measured from records)
- #670 (measured from records)
- 3 (measured from records)
- Record sources
- 565 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 979 (inferred from the name graph)
163,860 people, 2020
of 15M given names, spellings grouped
recorded for this name
corpus datasets behind its best-documented spelling
strongest: highest-authority source
Singapore, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Bobby in other scripts: Hebrew and Korean (Hangul)
(measured from records)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.
How to pronounce Bobby
- English:/ˈbɑbi/(recorded in a dictionary) from Wiktionary
Meaning & origin
(measured from records)Teutonic; diminutive of Robert, famous, bright fame
Cited for this meaning 1
- Baby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…
Attested across 22 languages in the etymology graph.
Often considered alongside
Names that people choosing a name often weigh against Bobby, 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)Bobby 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 | #270 | 163,860 | 1 in 2K | 159K | Bobby | 565 |
| PH Philippines | #538 | ≈67,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.7K | — | Bobby | 108 |
| IN India | — | ≈52,000 est. | ≈1 in 28K | 144 | Bobby | 160 |
| GB United Kingdom | #388 | ≈32,000 est. | ≈1 in 2.2K | 652 | Bobby | 255 |
| CA Canada | #329 | ≈23,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.8K | 4 | Bobby | 247 |
| SG Singapore | #133 | ≈6,200 est. | ≈1 in 979 | — | Bobby | 86 |
| IE Ireland | #171 | ≈5,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.1K | 215 | Bobby | 87 |
163,860 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; ONS — Baby names England and Wales (2024); Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender; Instate — India surnames (clean spellings) from electoral rolls; CSO — Irish Babies Names (1998–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 recorded senses
(measured from records)Bobby 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, A police officer.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Swedish, Bobby är en engelsk smekform till → Robert. Med stavningen Bobbie används det även som kvinnonamn.
as a nameFörnamn i Sverige. Kortfattat namnlexikon
In French, Variante anglaise de Bob, diminutif de Robert.
as a nameDictionnaire généalogique des prénoms
In English, Diminutive of Bob/Robert
as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…
In French, Diminutif de Robert.
as a nameDictionnaire généalogique des prénoms
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)- Bobby Charltonb. 1937GBEnglish association football player and manager (1937–2023)
- Bobby Mooreb. 1941GBEnglish association football player (1941–1993)
- Bobby Lashleyb. 1976USAmerican professional wrestler and mixed martial arts (MMA) fighter
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)A formal English salutation is built on the surname, so it needs a full name — on its own, a first name only supports the informal form.
Evidence
(measured from records)70 registers and reference works attest this spelling, across 41 countries.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What does the name Bobby mean, and where does it come from?
- Teutonic; diminutive of Robert, famous, bright fame Recorded by Baby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular….
- Is Bobby a male or female name?
- Bobby is used for both men and women, depending on the country. National registers that list names by sex disagree: United States (Census Bureau, 2020): listed as male; Netherlands (Meertens NVB): listed as male; United Kingdom (ONS, 2024): listed as male; Finland (DVV): listed under both sexes. We don't publish a percentage split.
- Which countries have the most people named Bobby?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 164 thousand people named Bobby, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled bobby. After it come Philippines, India, United Kingdom and Canada; the country table on this page ranks them.
- What are other forms of the name Bobby?
- In the etymology graph, Robert, Roberto and Bobbie are forms of the same name in other languages; it is recorded as a short form of Robin and Bob.
- How common is the name Bobby?
- In the United States, the national register counted 163,860 people named Bobby in 2020, about 1 in 2.0 thousand residents.
- How common is Bobby compared with other names?
- In the United States, Bobby is the 270th most common given name of 2,815,431 given names recorded there.
- How do you pronounce Bobby?
- In English /ˈbɑbi/ (Wiktionary).
What do you want to know about Bobby?
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/bobbyThe 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, “Bobby” — ranked 341st in the United States (Census Bureau, 2020). Data snapshot 2026-10-13.