Bailee
- Pronunciation
- [Bai-lee]
- Gender
- Female
- Meaning
- Courtyard Within Castle Walls: Steward Or Public Official. Surname Or Given Name.
- Origin
- English
About the Name Bailee
Bailee is a modern spelling variant of Bailey, an English occupational surname rooted in the Old French bailiff and the Latin baiulus, meaning a carrier, administrator, or official who managed a lord's estate or maintained a castle's outer courtyard — the bailey. The transition from a legal and administrative title to a surname, and then to a given name, followed the well-worn path of English occupational names into the nursery. Bailee's double-e ending gives the name a softer, more distinctly feminine visual character compared to the more neutral Bailey spelling.
Bailee first entered the US Social Security top-1000 in 2000 — and that debut year was also its best, peaking at #429. It has shown remarkable longevity for a variant spelling, remaining on the chart all the way through 2024 at #989 with 260 births, accumulating 12,126 total top-1000 births over its twenty-five-year run. That sustained presence — unusual for an alternate-spelling name — suggests that Bailee has built a loyal constituency rather than simply riding a single wave. Recent figures show 283 births at rank #934 in 2023 and 313 births at #889 in 2022.
The name's enduring appeal combines the friendly, approachable sound of Bailey with a spelling that reads as distinctly personal and feminine. Recorded variants include Baleigh, Baylee, Bayley, and Baylie, forming a cluster of related spellings that share the same occupational heritage and breezy two-syllable sound. Bailee sits comfortably alongside other surname-names that have become firmly established as given names for girls.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Bailee
US Popularity History (2000–2024)
Annual US births named Bailee by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 2000 with 658 girls named Bailee (girl rank #429 that year).
Where it stands today: in 2024, ranked #989 for girls (260 US births). That's 560 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.
Paste the snippet below on any HTML page. Includes a credit link back to 9BabyNames — please keep it intact.
Where in the US Is Bailee Most Popular?
Average girl-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 girls-name rankings — a per-capita measure that isn't biased toward large states. For Bailee the strongest states are West Virginia, Mississippi, Louisiana.
Strongest girls-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | West Virginia | #248 | 23 |
| 2 | Mississippi | #264 | 115 |
| 3 | Louisiana | #267 | 194 |
| 4 | Arkansas | #416 | 48 |
| 5 | Georgia | #470 | 228 |
| 6 | South Carolina | #475 | 81 |
| 7 | Alabama | #480 | 100 |
| 8 | Kentucky | #487 | 75 |
| 9 | Tennessee | #541 | 118 |
| 10 | Michigan | #549 | 154 |
Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Bailee in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.
Variant Forms
| Name | Meaning | Gender | Origin |
|---|---|---|---|
| Baleigh | "Bailiff, Steward." | Female | English |
| Baylee | Courtyard Within Castle Walls: Steward Or Public Official. Surname Or Given Name. | Female | English |
| Bayley | Courtyard Within Castle Walls: Steward Or Public Official. Surname Or Given Name. | Female | English |
| Baylie | Courtyard Within Castle Walls: Steward Or Public Official. Surname Or Given Name. | Female | English |
Looking for names like Bailee?
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 Bailee to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Bailee against today's most popular girls-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).