Grady
- Pronunciation
- [Gra-dy]
- Gender
- Male
- Meaning
- Irish Name Meaning "Noble" Or "Renowned."Variant, Gradey, Exists.
- Origin
- Gaelic
About the Name Grady
Grady descends from the Old Irish surname Ó Gráda, the patronymic surname meaning "descendant of Gráda" — Gráda being the Old Irish personal name from grádha meaning "noble" or "renowned." The name has been used continuously in Irish naming traditions for centuries, originally as a clan name and later transitioning to first-name usage.
Notable bearers include the fictional Sergeant Grady of various American TV detective series; American basketball player Grady Eifert; and contemporary American chef Grady Spears. The name's transition from surname to American first name accelerated through the 1990s and 2000s, riding the broader American taste for Irish-derived surnames as boys' first names alongside Connor, Riley, and Brody.
Grady's American climb is recent: the name climbed from outside the US top 1000 in 1995 to the US top 300 boys' rank by 2014 and the top 300 since. The name's appeal sits in three contemporary American naming preferences: the surname-style sophistication, the in-built Irish-Gaelic noble pedigree, and the popular two-syllable -y ending family (Grady, Brody, Cody, Riley). Two firm syllables, soft consonants, and tonal versatility from rural-American to upwardly-mobile-American. The name reads as both classical-Irish and contemporary American. Common nicknames are scarce since the name is already short — the rare Grade and Gradey each occasionally appear; the alternate spellings Grady and Gradey have their own SSA tracking. International forms include the original Old Irish Ó Gráda.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Grady
US Popularity History (2000–2025)
Annual US births named Grady by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 2008 with 1,196 boys named Grady (boy rank #286 that year).
Where it stands today: in 2025, ranked #373 for boys (851 US births). That's 87 places below its 2008 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 Grady 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 Grady the strongest states are North Dakota, Montana, South Dakota.
Strongest boys-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | North Dakota | #168 | 54 |
| 2 | Montana | #195 | 40 |
| 3 | South Dakota | #197 | 30 |
| 4 | Maine | #206 | 46 |
| 5 | Alabama | #224 | 235 |
| 6 | South Carolina | #240 | 200 |
| 7 | Ohio | #250 | 463 |
| 8 | West Virginia | #269 | 66 |
| 9 | Nebraska | #279 | 87 |
| 10 | North Carolina | #292 | 362 |
Weakest boys-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | California | #770 | 310 |
| 2 | New York | #634 | 216 |
| 3 | New Jersey | #614 | 99 |
| 4 | Arizona | #606 | 95 |
| 5 | Texas | #580 | 460 |
| 6 | Louisiana | #558 | 84 |
| 7 | Oregon | #485 | 50 |
| 8 | Illinois | #479 | 207 |
| 9 | Utah | #452 | 98 |
| 10 | Colorado | #442 | 128 |
Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Grady in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.
Variant Forms
Looking for names like Grady?
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 Grady to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Grady against today's most popular boys-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).