Trey
- Pronunciation
- [Trey]
- Gender
- Male
- Meaning
- Three. Also A Variant Of Irish Traigh Strand
- Origin
- English
About the Name Trey
Trey descends from the Old English tre (related to the modern English "three") — used continuously as an American naming tradition for the third son in a family (e.g., "Joseph III" being called Trey). An alternate Irish-Gaelic etymology connects Trey to traigh meaning "strand" or "shore."
Notable bearers include American basketball player Trey Burke (using Burke as a surname, born 1992, the iconic American NBA player and former NCAA Player of the Year 2013); American football player Trey Wingo (using Wingo as a surname, born 1963, the American sports journalist); the iconic American comedian Trey Parker (using Parker as a surname, born 1969, the iconic American co-creator of Comedy Central's South Park 1997–present); and the iconic NBA basketball player Trey Murphy III (born 2000).
Trey's American climb has been substantial: the name climbed into the US top 200 boys' rank by 2008 and the top 300 since. The name has been driven primarily by Southern-American naming. The name's appeal sits in three contemporary American naming preferences: the in-built distinctive third-son register, the strong Trey Parker American comedy cultural anchor and Trey Burke American sports anchor, and the compact one-syllable structure with the distinctive Tr-Y consonant rhythm. The name reads as distinctly contemporary American. Common nicknames are scarce since the name is already short — the rare Trey-bear and Treyster each occasionally appear; the alternate spellings Trey, Tre, and Tray have their own SSA tracking. International variants are minimal 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 Trey
US Popularity History (2000–2025)
Annual US births named Trey by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 2000 with 1,653 boys named Trey (boy rank #215 that year).
Where it stands today: in 2025, ranked #890 for boys (269 US births). That's 675 places below its 2000 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 Trey 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 Trey the strongest states are South Dakota, Utah, Idaho.
Strongest boys-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | South Dakota | #250 | 23 |
| 2 | Utah | #288 | 175 |
| 3 | Idaho | #319 | 34 |
| 4 | Pennsylvania | #445 | 211 |
| 5 | Connecticut | #448 | 33 |
| 6 | Nebraska | #455 | 34 |
| 7 | Iowa | #456 | 58 |
| 8 | Kansas | #514 | 46 |
| 9 | Ohio | #528 | 180 |
| 10 | Indiana | #530 | 129 |
Weakest boys-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | California | #974 | 173 |
| 2 | North Carolina | #881 | 53 |
| 3 | Texas | #839 | 237 |
| 4 | New York | #792 | 130 |
| 5 | Georgia | #774 | 47 |
| 6 | Tennessee | #720 | 63 |
| 7 | Florida | #713 | 165 |
| 8 | Colorado | #690 | 71 |
| 9 | Oklahoma | #686 | 37 |
| 10 | Arizona | #676 | 62 |
Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Trey in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.
Looking for names like Trey?
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 Trey to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Trey against today's most popular boys-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).