Harvey
- Pronunciation
- [Har-vey]
- Gender
- Male
- Meaning
- Bitter
- Origin
- English
About the Name Harvey
Harvey descends from the Old Breton Haerviu, composed of haer (battle) and viu (worthy) — yielding "battle-worthy" or "worthy in battle." The name was brought to England by Norman French invaders following the 1066 conquest, where it became established as both a first name and surname.
Notable bearers include the iconic American film producer Harvey Weinstein (using Weinstein as a surname, born 1952, whose 2017 sexual abuse scandal and subsequent conviction sparked the global #MeToo movement); American politician Harvey Milk (1930–1978, the iconic American gay rights activist and first openly gay elected official in California, assassinated in 1978); American actor Steve Harvey (using Harvey as a surname, born 1957); and the fictional Harvey Specter of USA Network's Suits (2011–2019).
Harvey held a US top-100 boys' rank from 1880 through 1925. After a long mid-20th-century quiet period, the name has been climbing back through the 2010s and 2020s as part of the broader vintage-revival wave. The name was in some part anchored in mid-20th-century American memory through the 1950 Jimmy Stewart film Harvey (about an invisible six-foot-tall rabbit). Harvey's American climb back is recent: the name climbed back into the US top 300 boys' rank by 2018 and the top 300 since. The name's appeal sits in three contemporary American naming preferences: the surname-style sophistication, the in-built Norman-French historical pedigree, and the popular two-syllable -ey ending family (Harvey, Henry, Casey, Riley). Two firm syllables, soft consonants, and tonal versatility from rural-American to upwardly-mobile-American. The name reads as both classical-vintage and contemporary American. Common nicknames Harv (the dominant short form, casual and warm) and the rare Vey each carry distinct registers; international forms include Hervé (French original, with accent) and the broader Norman-French Hervé family.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Harvey
US Popularity History (1880–2025)
Annual US births named Harvey by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 1921 with 2,287 boys named Harvey (boy rank #87 that year).
Where it stands today: in 2025, ranked #251 for boys (1,381 US births). That's 164 places below its 1921 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 Harvey 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 Harvey the strongest states are Utah, Minnesota, South Dakota.
Strongest boys-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Utah | #112 | 421 |
| 2 | Minnesota | #163 | 402 |
| 3 | South Dakota | #164 | 78 |
| 4 | North Dakota | #168 | 61 |
| 5 | Montana | #184 | 23 |
| 6 | Alaska | #187 | 16 |
| 7 | New Hampshire | #200 | 27 |
| 8 | Wisconsin | #212 | 295 |
| 9 | Idaho | #213 | 118 |
| 10 | Nebraska | #267 | 93 |
Weakest boys-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | New Jersey | #741 | 62 |
| 2 | Georgia | #610 | 149 |
| 3 | Louisiana | #567 | 67 |
| 4 | Florida | #560 | 278 |
| 5 | Mississippi | #537 | 22 |
| 6 | New York | #515 | 287 |
| 7 | Texas | #514 | 573 |
| 8 | Illinois | #490 | 212 |
| 9 | Maryland | #483 | 88 |
| 10 | Massachusetts | #470 | 101 |
Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Harvey in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.
Variant Forms
| Name | Meaning | Gender | Origin |
|---|---|---|---|
| Herve | Bitter | Male | English |
Famous People Named Harvey
3 notable figures from history and culture who share the name Harvey.
- Harvey Fierstein is an American playwright, actor and a gay rights activist.
- Harvey Milk — Civil Rights Leader (1930)
- Harvey Williams Cushing is known as the father of ‘modern neurosurgery’.
Looking for names like Harvey?
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 Harvey to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Harvey 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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