Terry
- Gender
- Female
- Meaning
- Abbreviation Of Teresa Which Is A Popular Saint's Name Of Uncertain Meaning.
- Origin
- English
About the Name Terry
Terry, as a feminine name, functions as an abbreviation or nickname form of Teresa — a popular saint's name whose own etymology remains uncertain, with scholars proposing connections ranging from the Greek island of Thera to the Greek therizo (to reap) without reaching consensus. By the mid-twentieth century Terry had broken free of its diminutive role and circulated as a standalone given name, worn equally by boys and girls in an era when short, brisk unisex names enjoyed wide popularity. Its Anglo-English roots gave it an unpretentious, energetic quality that suited postwar American naming tastes.
Notable bearers include Terry Bradshaw (born 1948), an American Hall of Fame football quarterback whose 14-year NFL career with the Pittsburgh Steelers produced four Super Bowl championships, and Terry Fox (born 1958), a Canadian athlete and cancer-research activist whose 1980 Marathon of Hope — a cross-Canada run intended to raise $1 million for cancer research — became one of the most celebrated humanitarian stories in Canadian history.
In the US Social Security top-1000 for females, Terry first entered in 1954 and peaked the following year, 1955, at its best rank of #83. It held strong through the late 1950s before leaving the top-1000 after 1959, accumulating 31,219 top-1000 births in that brief but vigorous run. Recorded variants include Terell, Teri, Teriana, Teriann, Terika, Terilynn, Terri, Terrie, Terrin, Terryn, and Teryn — a wide family of phonetic alternatives that share the name's crisp, direct sound.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Terry
US Popularity History (1938–2022)
Annual US births named Terry by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 1957 with 15,618 boys named Terry (boy rank #33 that year).
Where it stands today: in 2022, ranked #978 for boys (231 US births). That's 945 places below its 1957 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 Terry 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 Terry the strongest states are Mississippi, Kentucky, Louisiana.
Strongest boys-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Mississippi | #399 | 68 |
| 2 | Kentucky | #510 | 72 |
| 3 | Louisiana | #548 | 84 |
| 4 | Alabama | #552 | 67 |
| 5 | Arkansas | #584 | 22 |
| 6 | South Carolina | #608 | 31 |
| 7 | Kansas | #622 | 16 |
| 8 | Oklahoma | #627 | 21 |
| 9 | Wisconsin | #653 | 32 |
| 10 | Missouri | #671 | 58 |
Weakest boys-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | New York | #1,010 | 42 |
| 2 | California | #894 | 152 |
| 3 | Arizona | #863 | 19 |
| 4 | Texas | #861 | 136 |
| 5 | Illinois | #835 | 59 |
| 6 | Pennsylvania | #818 | 29 |
| 7 | Virginia | #795 | 34 |
| 8 | Ohio | #785 | 92 |
| 9 | Florida | #766 | 184 |
| 10 | North Carolina | #745 | 105 |
Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Terry in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.
Variant Forms
| Name | Meaning | Gender | Origin |
|---|---|---|---|
| Terell | Powerful. | Male | German |
| Teri | Abbreviation Of Teresa Which Is A Popular Saint's Name Of Uncertain Meaning. | Female | English |
| Teriana | Abbreviation Of Teresa Which Is A Popular Saint's Name Of Uncertain Meaning. | Female | English |
| Teriann | Abbreviation Of Teresa Which Is A Popular Saint's Name Of Uncertain Meaning. | Female | English |
| Terika | Abbreviation Of Teresa Which Is A Popular Saint's Name Of Uncertain Meaning. | Male | English |
| Terilynn | Abbreviation Of Teresa Which Is A Popular Saint's Name Of Uncertain Meaning. | Female | English |
| Terri | Abbreviation Of Teresa Which Is A Popular Saint's Name Of Uncertain Meaning. | Female | English |
| Terrie | Abbreviation Of Teresa Which Is A Popular Saint's Name Of Uncertain Meaning. | Female | English |
| Terrin | Abbreviation Of Teresa Which Is A Popular Saint's Name Of Uncertain Meaning. | Female | English |
| Terryn | Abbreviation Of Teresa Which Is A Popular Saint's Name Of Uncertain Meaning. | Female | English |
| Teryn | Abbreviation Of Teresa Which Is A Popular Saint's Name Of Uncertain Meaning. | Female | English |
Famous People Named Terry
2 notable figures from history and culture who share the name Terry.
- Terry Bradshaw — Football Player (1948)
- Terry Fox — Runner (1958)
Looking for names like Terry?
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 Terry to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Terry against today's most popular boys-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).