Greg
- Pronunciation
- [Greg]
- Gender
- Male
- Meaning
- Abbreviation Of Gregory.
- Origin
- English
About the Name Greg
Greg is an English abbreviated form of Gregory, which derives from the Latin Gregorius, from the Greek Grēgorios, meaning "watchful" or "alert" — from grēgorein, to be awake or vigilant. Gregory has been a name of considerable historical and ecclesiastical weight, borne by sixteen popes and numerous saints, making it one of the more enduring names in the Christian tradition. Greg strips that formal heritage down to a single, breezy syllable, functioning as the informal everyday counterpart to the fuller name. Its use as a standalone registered given name reflects the mid-twentieth-century American preference for the short form over the formal version.
Greg first entered the US Social Security top-1000 in 1959 and peaked in 1961 at rank #77, a brief window of high visibility during the early 1960s when short, sharp masculine names were in strong fashion. It last appeared in the top-1000 in 1964 at rank #95, accumulating more than 29,000 top-1000 births across its six-year tracked span. It has not re-entered the SSA top-1000 in the records tracked here beyond 1964 as a standalone form, though Gregory continued independently.
Greg carries a clean, unpretentious quality — a name that feels effortlessly casual without being diminutive in feel. Its sole recorded variant is Gregg, a double-g spelling that represents a minor orthographic preference with no difference in pronunciation or meaning.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Greg
US Popularity History (1959–1964)
Annual US births named Greg by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 1961 with 5,398 boys named Greg (boy rank #77 that year).
Where it stands today: in 1964, ranked #95 for boys (3,971 US births). That's 18 places below its 1961 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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Variant Forms
| Name | Meaning | Gender | Origin |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gregg | Abbreviation Of Gregory. Surname. | Male | English |
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Compare Greg to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Greg 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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