Troy
- Pronunciation
- [Troy]
- Gender
- Male
- Meaning
- Curly-Haired
- Origin
- French
About the Name Troy
Troy descends from the legendary city of Troy (Greek Troia) — the iconic ancient city of northwestern Anatolia (modern-day Turkey) that was the setting of Homer's Iliad. The Trojan War (c. 1200 BCE according to Greek tradition) and the city's destruction after the Greeks' deception with the Trojan Horse have made Troy one of the most-iconic settings of Western classical literature.
The name has been used in English-speaking countries since the 19th century, originally as a literary-classical reference and later as a modern American boys' name. Notable bearers include American actor Troy Aikman (using Aikman as a surname, born 1966, the iconic American NFL quarterback who won three Super Bowls with the Dallas Cowboys); the American actor Troy Donahue (1936–2001, the iconic American 1960s film and TV actor); and the fictional Troy Bolton of Disney's High School Musical trilogy (2006–2008, played by Zac Efron).
Troy held a US top-100 boys' rank from 1959 through 1981 — about two decades of consistent American popularity, peaking around 1968 at #36 in the United States. The name has receded since but remains in steady use, currently sitting in the US top 300 boys' rank. The name's appeal sits in three contemporary American naming preferences: the layered Greek-classical-literary pedigree, the strong Troy Aikman American sports cultural anchor, and the compact one-syllable structure with the distinctive Tr-Y consonant rhythm. Common nicknames are scarce since the name is already short — the rare Troy-bear and Troyer each occasionally appear; the alternate spellings Troy and Troye have their own SSA tracking. International forms include Troia (Greek/Italian original) and the broader related Trojan family. The original etymology of "Troy" is debated and may predate Greek-language sources entirely.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Troy
US Popularity History (1961–2025)
Annual US births named Troy by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 1970 with 8,448 boys named Troy (boy rank #41 that year).
Where it stands today: in 2025, ranked #533 for boys (563 US births). That's 492 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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Where in the US Is Troy 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 Troy the strongest states are Delaware, Hawaii, Idaho.
Strongest boys-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Delaware | #200 | 19 |
| 2 | Hawaii | #239 | 27 |
| 3 | Idaho | #318 | 47 |
| 4 | Pennsylvania | #332 | 323 |
| 5 | New Mexico | #346 | 33 |
| 6 | Connecticut | #354 | 86 |
| 7 | Michigan | #362 | 248 |
| 8 | Massachusetts | #369 | 137 |
| 9 | Florida | #379 | 458 |
| 10 | Nevada | #382 | 73 |
Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Troy in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.
Variant Forms
Looking for names like Troy?
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 Troy to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Troy 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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