Tracy
- Pronunciation
- [Tra-cy]
- Gender
- Male
- Meaning
- Brave
- Origin
- Anglo
About the Name Tracy
Tracy as a masculine given name derives from an Anglo-Norman surname, itself rooted in the French place name Tracy-Bocage in Normandy — the traditional meaning of "brave" reflects folk-etymology associations rather than a strict linguistic derivation from a single root word. The name entered English use as a surname through Norman settlers and later transferred to given-name use, following the well-worn path of aristocratic surnames becoming first names. Its Anglo-Norman heritage gives it a grounded, no-nonsense quality that fits the terse single-syllable feel of the name in spoken English.
Tracy Chapman (born 1964) is an American singer-songwriter whose four-decade music career has produced four Grammy Awards: 1989 Best New Artist, 1989 Best Female Pop Vocal Performance for "Fast Car," 1989 Best Contemporary Folk Album, and a fourth Grammy in her career — a body of recognition that placed her among the most acclaimed artists of the late 1980s.
On the male side of the SSA top-1000, Tracy entered and exited within just two years: it first appeared in 1966 at rank #98 with 3,379 births and repeated that rank in 1967 with 3,170 births — a total of 6,549 top-1000 births across those two years. Its brief male-chart tenure reflects the transitional moment when Tracy was shifting decisively toward female usage in American naming culture. The recorded variant is Tracey.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Tracy
US Popularity History (1960–2004)
Annual US births named Tracy by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 1970 with 18,465 girls named Tracy (girl rank #10 that year).
Where it stands today: in 2004, ranked #951 for girls (254 US births). That's 941 places below its 1970 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tracey | Brave | Male | Anglo |
Famous People Named Tracy
1 notable figure from history and culture who share the name Tracy.
- Tracy Chapman — Pop Singer (1964)
Looking for names like Tracy?
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 Tracy to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Tracy against today's most popular girls-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).
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