Lacey
- Pronunciation
- [La-cey]
- Gender
- Female
- Meaning
- "Derived From Lacey Which Is A French Nobleman's Surname Brought To British Isles After Norman Conquest. Feminine, Petite, And Pure. Very Beautiful."
- Origin
- English
About the Name Lacey
Lacey descends from the Old French surname de Lacy, originally referring to those from Lassy, a town in Normandy. The Lacey family was one of the iconic Anglo-Norman noble families, with multiple branches established in England following the 1066 Norman Conquest. The English word "lace" (the decorative woven textile) ultimately derives from the same Latin root through the same Norman-French intermediary.
Notable bearers include American actress Lacey Chabert (Lacey Nicole Chabert, born 1982, the iconic American actress whose career through Fox's Party of Five 1994–2000 and Mean Girls 2004 made her one of the foundational figures of early-2000s American TV); American figure skater Lacey Schwimmer; American singer Lacey Sturm; and the contemporary American actress Lacey Wilson.
Lacey's American climb has been substantial: the name climbed into the US top 200 girls' rank by 1985 and the top 300 since. The name has been used predominantly for girls in modern American naming. The name's appeal sits in three contemporary American naming preferences: the surname-style sophistication, the in-built feminine/lace-textile register (the lace association), and the popular two-syllable -ey ending family (Lacey, Bailey, Casey, Riley). Two firm syllables, soft consonants, and tonal warmth distinctive to vintage-revival names. The name reads as both classical-Norman-French and contemporary American with the strong Lacey Chabert American TV cultural anchor. Common nicknames Lace (the dominant short form, casual and warm), Lacie, and the rare Cey each carry distinct registers; the alternate spellings Lacey, Lacy (the simpler form), and Laci have their own SSA tracking. International forms include the original Old French de Lacy.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Lacey
US Popularity History (2000–2025)
Annual US births named Lacey by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 2007 with 839 girls named Lacey (girl rank #390 that year).
Where it stands today: in 2025, ranked #738 for girls (370 US births). That's 348 places below its 2007 peak.
Source: US Social Security Administration. Limitations: US birth-certificate data only; names appearing fewer than 5 times in a given year are suppressed for privacy; spelling variants are counted separately. For names that ranked outside the US top 100 before year 2000, only the years they reached the top 100 are shown — the chart may have gaps for less-popular historical names.
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Where in the US Is Lacey Most Popular?
Average girl-name rank within each state across 2016–2025 SSA records. A lower number means the name appears closer to the top of that state's girls-name rankings — a per-capita measure that isn't biased toward large states. For Lacey the strongest states are West Virginia, New Mexico, Idaho.
Strongest girls-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | West Virginia | #258 | 43 |
| 2 | New Mexico | #312 | 18 |
| 3 | Idaho | #339 | 38 |
| 4 | Utah | #417 | 95 |
| 5 | Kentucky | #434 | 96 |
| 6 | Pennsylvania | #453 | 224 |
| 7 | Wisconsin | #462 | 110 |
| 8 | Oregon | #473 | 41 |
| 9 | Mississippi | #510 | 25 |
| 10 | North Carolina | #533 | 184 |
Weakest girls-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | California | #965 | 100 |
| 2 | Texas | #915 | 230 |
| 3 | New York | #829 | 141 |
| 4 | Indiana | #815 | 75 |
| 5 | Colorado | #813 | 64 |
| 6 | Florida | #786 | 124 |
| 7 | Louisiana | #755 | 20 |
| 8 | Georgia | #748 | 113 |
| 9 | Washington | #740 | 64 |
| 10 | Illinois | #739 | 92 |
Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Lacey in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.
Variant Forms
Looking for names like Lacey?
A dedicated page with 60+ related names — spelling variants, rhymes, alliterations, same-origin matches, and shared meaning concepts — lives at its own URL so each kind of similarity gets a deeper treatment than fits here.
Compare Lacey to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Lacey against today's most popular girls-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).