Andrew: Meaning of Baby Name Andrew

About the Name Andrew

Andrew descends from the Greek Andreas, derived from aner / andros meaning "man" — yielding the gloss "manly" or "strong/courageous as a man." The name's overwhelming Christian anchor is Saint Andrew the Apostle, brother of Simon Peter, the first-called disciple in the Gospel of John, and (according to tradition) crucified on a saltire-shaped cross — the X-shape that gives Scotland its national flag. Andrew is the patron saint of Scotland, Russia, Greece, Romania, and several other countries.

The name has been continuously used in English-speaking countries for nearly a millennium. Notable bearers include Andrew Jackson (7th US president), Andrew Carnegie (Scottish-American steel magnate and philanthropist who funded over 2,500 public libraries), 19th-century novelist Andrew Lang (compiler of the Coloured Fairy Books), and tennis player Andrew Murray (modern, knighted in 2017). Across nearly every Christian-influenced naming tradition, the Andrew family of names produces some of the most-used boys' names: Andrei (Russian), André (French/Portuguese), Andrés (Spanish), Andrea (Italian, despite the feminine-looking ending).

Andrew held a US top-25 boys' rank in nearly every year between 1880 and 2010, peaking in the top 10 from the late 1980s through the early 2000s. The name's appeal is its quiet authority — religiously anchored, classically derived, two soft syllables, never trendy and never stale. Common nicknames Andy, Drew, and the rarer Andre each carry their own register: Andy is friendly and domestic; Drew is concise and modern (now itself a popular standalone name). International variants include the Greek original Andreas and the Italian masculine Andrea.

Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.

Quick Facts About Andrew

5,642

English baby names in our dictionary

3,391

English male names

557

6-letter A-names in our dictionary

1,087

A-male names total

1880–2025

years of US SSA records (146 total)

1,329,390

total US births named Andrew (all years)

US Popularity History (1880–2025)

↘️ Falling: Andrew dropped 21 places in the US boys ranking over the last 5 years (#52 in 2020 → #73 in 2025).

Annual US births named Andrew by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 1987 with 36,205 boys named Andrew (boy rank #6 that year).

Where it stands today: in 2025, ranked #73 for boys (4,497 US births). That's 67 places below its 1987 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.

Where in the US Is Andrew Most Popular?

Average boy-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 boys-name rankings — a per-capita measure that isn't biased toward large states. For Andrew the strongest states are Massachusetts, Ohio, California.

Strongest boys-name states

#	State	Avg rank	Births
1	Massachusetts	#42	1,396
2	Ohio	#43	2,263
3	California	#44	8,539
4	New Jersey	#46	1,723
5	Connecticut	#47	711
6	Pennsylvania	#47	2,341
7	Maryland	#49	1,069
8	Delaware	#49	179
9	Nevada	#49	542
10	New York	#50	3,395

Weakest boys-name states

#	State	Avg rank	Births
1	South Dakota	#103	117
2	Iowa	#91	404
3	Nebraska	#87	279
4	Oklahoma	#83	541
5	Maine	#80	160
6	Minnesota	#79	789
7	West Virginia	#77	250
8	Hawaii	#76	139
9	Mississippi	#75	414
10	Idaho	#75	261

Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Andrew in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.

Variant Forms

Name	Meaning	Gender	Origin
Aindreas	Manly	Male	Gaelic
Andie	Feminine Of Andrea.	Female	English
Andre	Manly: Brave. Variant Of English Andrew.	Male	French
Andrea	Feminine Form Of Andrew Manly	Female	Spanish
Andreas	German Form Of Andrew (Manly)	Male	German
Andy	Manly: Brave. Variant Of English Andrew.	Male	French
Drew	Abbreviation Of Andrew. Modern Actress Drew Barrymore.	Female	Scottish
Drud	Strong	Male	German
Drugi	Strong	Male	German

Famous People Named Andrew

11 notable figures from history and culture who share the name Andrew.

Andrew Bonar Law was a British Conservative Party statesman and Prime Minister, often referred to as the ‘Unknown Prime Minister’.
Andrew Carnegie — Entrepreneur (1835)
Andrew Cunanan was an American spree killer, who committed suicide after killing five people within a period of three months.
Andrew Goodman was an American civil rights activist, murdered at a young age by members of the Ku Klux Klan.
Andrew Jackson — US President (1767)
Andrew Johnson — US President (1808)
Andrew Lang was a Scottish literary critic best known for collecting fairy tales.
Andrew Marvell was an English poet famous for his poem, ‘To His Coy Mistress’.
Andrew Taylor Still is credited for founding the ‘American School of Osteopathy’ in Missouri.
Andrew William Mellon was an American industrialist and philanthropist.
Andrew Wyeth was a prominent visual artist of America.

Browse more famous Andrews and similar first names →

Looking for names like Andrew?

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Compare Andrew to Other Popular Names

Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Andrew against today's most popular boys-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).

Andrew vs Liam 239,320 births since 2014

Andrew vs Noah 230,181 births since 2014

Andrew vs Oliver 164,076 births since 2014

Andrew vs William 159,918 births since 2014

Andrew vs James 157,850 births since 2014

Andrew vs Elijah 153,351 births since 2014

Andrew vs Benjamin 147,449 births since 2014

Andrew vs Lucas 141,302 births since 2014

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