Travis
- Pronunciation
- [Tra-vis]
- Gender
- Male
- Meaning
- Crossing: Crossroads.
- Origin
- English
About the Name Travis
Travis descends from the Old French traverser meaning "to cross" — originally a surname referring to a toll-gate keeper or one who collected fees at crossings (medieval bridges, river fords). The surname appears in English records continuously since at least the 13th century.
The name's transition from surname to American first name accelerated through the 1970s and 1980s, riding the broader American taste for occupational surnames as boys' names alongside Travis as a leading example. Notable bearers include the historical American hero William Barret Travis (1809–1836, the Texan commander who died at the Battle of the Alamo, anchoring the name in American Western mythology); American singer Travis Tritt (born 1963, the American country music star); and contemporary American rapper Travis Scott (born 1991, the American hip-hop artist whose 2018 album Astroworld reached #1 on the Billboard 200).
Travis held a US top-100 boys' rank from 1976 through 1995 — about two decades of consistent American popularity. The name has receded slightly since but remains in steady use. The name's appeal sits in three contemporary American naming preferences: the surname-style sophistication, the in-built Texan-American historical anchor, and the popular two-syllable hard-consonant structure. Two firm syllables, hard consonants, and tonal versatility from rural-American to upwardly-mobile-American. The name reads as both classical-Western and contemporary American. Common nicknames Trav, Travie, and the rare Vis each carry distinct registers. There are no significant international variants since the name's first-name use is essentially American.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Travis
US Popularity History (1970–2025)
Annual US births named Travis by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 1989 with 11,528 boys named Travis (boy rank #41 that year).
Where it stands today: in 2025, ranked #434 for boys (732 US births). That's 393 places below its 1989 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 Travis 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 Travis the strongest states are Alaska, Rhode Island, Delaware.
Strongest boys-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Alaska | #206 | 17 |
| 2 | Rhode Island | #209 | 23 |
| 3 | Delaware | #210 | 19 |
| 4 | Mississippi | #222 | 150 |
| 5 | New Hampshire | #226 | 24 |
| 6 | Montana | #262 | 16 |
| 7 | Hawaii | #265 | 18 |
| 8 | Louisiana | #269 | 214 |
| 9 | Massachusetts | #287 | 200 |
| 10 | South Carolina | #288 | 179 |
Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Travis in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.
Variant Forms
Famous People Named Travis
1 notable figure from history and culture who share the name Travis.
- Travis Tritt — Country Singer (1963)
Looking for names like Travis?
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 Travis to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Travis 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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