Holly
- Pronunciation
- [Ho-lly]
- Gender
- Female
- Meaning
- Holy
- Origin
- English
About the Name Holly
Holly descends from the Old English holegn, referring to the holly tree (Ilex aquifolium) — the evergreen tree with characteristic glossy green leaves and red berries that have been continuously associated with Christian Christmas symbolism (representing the Crown of Thorns) since the medieval period. The name has been used in English-speaking countries since the 19th century, particularly common as a name for Christmas-baby girls.
The name's overwhelming modern cultural anchor is the iconic Holly Golightly of Truman Capote's 1958 novella Breakfast at Tiffany's (and its 1961 film adaptation, played by Audrey Hepburn) — one of the most-iconic female characters of mid-20th-century American literature. Holly Golightly's stylish-yet-melancholic Manhattan persona made the name a cultural touchstone for late-1950s and 1960s American sophistication.
Other notable bearers include American actress Holly Hunter (born 1958, the iconic American Oscar-winning actress of The Piano 1993); American actress Holly Madison (born 1979); and contemporary American singer Holly Knight. Holly held a US top-100 girls' rank from 1965 through 1990 — about a quarter century of consistent American popularity, peaking around 1976 at #43 in the United States. The name has receded since but remains in steady use, currently sitting in the US top 300 girls' rank. The name's appeal is its layered Old English-Christmas-literary pedigree combined with two firm syllables — the in-built holly-tree Christmas religious register, the strong Holly Golightly literary cultural anchor and Holly Hunter Hollywood anchor, and tonal warmth distinctive to nature-derived naming. Common nicknames are scarce since the name is already short — Hol (the dominant short form, casual and warm) and the rare Holly-bear each occasionally appear; the alternate spellings Holly, Hollie, and Holli have their own SSA tracking. International forms include Houx (French) and the broader related Old English Holly family.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Holly
US Popularity History (1966–2025)
Annual US births named Holly by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 1983 with 6,388 girls named Holly (girl rank #48 that year).
Where it stands today: in 2025, ranked #416 for girls (751 US births). That's 368 places below its 1983 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 Holly 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 Holly the strongest states are Alaska, Montana, New Hampshire.
Strongest girls-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Alaska | #143 | 18 |
| 2 | Montana | #200 | 22 |
| 3 | New Hampshire | #211 | 29 |
| 4 | New Mexico | #268 | 27 |
| 5 | Idaho | #276 | 62 |
| 6 | Colorado | #337 | 157 |
| 7 | Kansas | #353 | 92 |
| 8 | Minnesota | #364 | 150 |
| 9 | Washington | #372 | 183 |
| 10 | Oregon | #375 | 95 |
Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Holly in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.
Variant Forms
| Name | Meaning | Gender | Origin |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hollie | The Holly Tree. Common Name Given Christmas Girl Babies. | Female | English |
Looking for names like Holly?
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 Holly to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Holly against today's most popular girls-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).
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