Todd
- Pronunciation
- [Todd]
- Gender
- Male
- Meaning
- Fox. Tod Is A Scottish Nickname Meaning A Clever Or Wily Person.
- Origin
- English
About the Name Todd
Todd is an English surname-turned-given-name derived from the Middle English and Scottish word tod or todde, meaning "fox" — and by extension, in Scottish usage, a shrewd or cunning person. The association with the fox gave the name a sly, clever character in English folklore, and its rise as a given name in the mid-20th century fits the broader pattern of animal-derived and outdoorsy surnames crossing into first-name use. Its single hard syllable and crisp consonants give it a decisive, punchy sound that suited the mid-century preference for short masculine names.
On the US Social Security charts, Todd first entered the top-1000 in 1959 and reached its peak just five years later, in 1964, at rank #28 — a rapid climb that mirrors the trajectories of other mid-century single-syllable names like Chad, Brad, and Scott. It accumulated over 242,000 top-1000 births across its tracked run. After its 1960s peak, Todd declined gradually through the following decades, leaving the top-1000 after 2015, when it sat at #976. That sustained presence across five-plus decades points to a name that was never a pure flash-in-the-pan, even if it is now firmly associated with the Baby Boomer generation.
In the present landscape, Todd reads as a solidly retro name — familiar and friendly, carrying the clean, no-nonsense character of its era. Parents drawn to one-syllable classics occasionally return to it as an alternative to the more heavily revived Scott or Craig. The recorded variant is Tod.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Todd
US Popularity History (1959–2015)
Annual US births named Todd by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 1964 with 15,349 boys named Todd (boy rank #28 that year).
Where it stands today: in 2015, ranked #976 for boys (212 US births). That's 948 places below its 1964 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 Todd 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 Todd the strongest states are Utah, Missouri, Ohio.
Strongest boys-name states
Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Todd in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.
Variant Forms
| Name | Meaning | Gender | Origin |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tod | Fox. Tod Is A Scottish Nickname Meaning A Clever Or Wily Person. | Male | English |
Looking for names like Todd?
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 Todd to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Todd 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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