Tim
- Gender
- Male
- Meaning
- Variant Of Timothy One Who Honors God.
- Origin
- English
About the Name Tim
Tim is a short form of Timothy, a name rooted in the Greek Timotheos, composed of time ("honor") and theos ("God") — meaning "one who honors God." The shortened form Tim has a directness that made it a natural standalone name in the English-speaking world, especially in the mid-twentieth century when brief, punchy masculine names were in vogue. It carries none of the formality of the full form, communicating instead a sturdy, no-nonsense character.
Notable bearers include Tim Curry (born 1946), the English actor and singer whose five-decade career produced multiple defining film and TV roles — particularly his 1973 stage and 1975 film role as Dr. Frank-N-Furter in Jim Sharman's The Rocky Horror Picture Show; Tim Duncan (born 1976), the American Hall of Fame former professional basketball player whose 19-year NBA career with the San Antonio Spurs (1997–2016) produced five NBA championships (1999, 2003, 2005, 2007, 2014) and two NBA Most Valuable Player awards; and Tim Vine (born 1967), the English comedian, actor, and TV presenter whose career produced a 2004 Edinburgh Festival Fringe Funniest Joke of the Fringe recognition.
Tim entered the US Social Security top-1000 in 1958 and peaked the following year in 1959 at its best rank of #60. The name remained in the top-1000 through 1965, accumulating 44,561 top-1000 births across its tracked window — a concentrated surge during the late-1950s to mid-1960s baby boom. Today Tim feels like a quintessential mid-century American name. Its recorded variant is Timmy, the familiar diminutive that added even more warmth to an already friendly form.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Tim
US Popularity History (1958–1965)
Annual US births named Tim by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 1960 with 6,931 boys named Tim (boy rank #60 that year).
Where it stands today: in 1965, ranked #97 for boys (3,718 US births). That's 37 places below its 1960 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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Variant Forms
| Name | Meaning | Gender | Origin |
|---|---|---|---|
| Timmy | Variant Of Timothy One Who Honors God. | Male | English |
Famous People Named Tim
3 notable figures from history and culture who share the name Tim.
- Tim Curry — Movie Actor (1946)
- Tim Duncan — Basketball Player (1976)
- Tim Vine — Comedian (1967)
Looking for names like Tim?
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 Tim to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Tim against today's most popular boys-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).
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