Casey: Meaning of Baby Name Casey

About the Name Casey

Casey is an Irish Gaelic name derived from Cathasaigh, an ancient Irish surname meaning "brave in battle" or "vigilant" — qualities associated with the warrior ideal in Gaelic culture. It began as a surname, became a given name through the common Irish-American pattern of surnames migrating into the first-name pool, and has been used for both boys and girls, making it one of the earlier genuinely gender-neutral names in American use. Its two-syllable structure and easy sound give it a relaxed, approachable character.

A notable bearer is Casey Stengel, an American Major League Baseball outfielder and manager, born on July 30, 1890, in Kansas City, Missouri, and died on September 29, 1975, in Glendale, California, whose nickname derived from his Kansas City origins and who became one of the most celebrated managers in baseball history.

In the SSA records for female use, Casey first entered the top-1000 in 1986 and peaked that same year at rank #80. It has maintained a remarkably long presence on the female charts, sitting at rank #948 in 2022 with 286 births, accumulating more than 23,000 top-1000 births across its tracked span. Recorded variants include Case, Cayce, and Kasey, the last of which represents the most common alternative spelling and has its own independent chart history.

Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.

Quick Facts About Casey

1,167

Irish baby names in our dictionary

462

Irish female names

212

5-letter C-names in our dictionary

721

C-female names total

1978–2025

years of US SSA records (40 total)

96,748

total US births named Casey (all years)

US Popularity History (1978–2025)

🔥 Rising fast: Casey climbed 197 places in the US boys ranking over the last 5 years (#517 in 2020 → #320 in 2025).

Annual US births named Casey by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 1990 with 4,133 boys named Casey (boy rank #89 that year).

Where it stands today: in 2025, ranked #320 for boys (1,072 US births). That's 231 places below its 1990 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.

Where in the US Is Casey 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 Casey the strongest states are Rhode Island, South Dakota, Massachusetts.

Strongest boys-name states

#	State	Avg rank	Births
1	Rhode Island	#212	15
2	South Dakota	#227	23
3	Massachusetts	#248	243
4	New Mexico	#289	51
5	Oregon	#304	129
6	Connecticut	#308	99
7	Idaho	#319	50
8	Pennsylvania	#367	289
9	Maryland	#389	133
10	Nevada	#391	54

Weakest boys-name states

#	State	Avg rank	Births
1	Florida	#626	230
2	Georgia	#617	147
3	North Carolina	#579	165
4	Indiana	#576	100
5	Louisiana	#545	80
6	Arizona	#526	119
7	Missouri	#514	114
8	Texas	#506	618
9	South Carolina	#501	66
10	Kentucky	#487	72

Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Casey in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.

Variant Forms

Name	Meaning	Gender	Origin
Case	Variant Of Casey Alert: Vigorous.	Male	Irish
Kasey	Vigilant.	Female	Irish

Famous People Named Casey

1 notable figure from history and culture who share the name Casey.

Casey Stengel was the most successful baseball manager in the history of the game.

Browse more famous Caseys and similar first names →

Looking for names like Casey?

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.

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Compare Casey to Other Popular Names

Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Casey against today's most popular boys-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).

Casey vs Liam 239,320 births since 2014

Casey vs Noah 230,181 births since 2014

Casey vs Oliver 164,076 births since 2014

Casey vs William 159,918 births since 2014

Casey vs James 157,850 births since 2014

Casey vs Elijah 153,351 births since 2014

Casey vs Benjamin 147,449 births since 2014

Casey vs Lucas 141,302 births since 2014

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