Irving
- Pronunciation
- [Ir-ving]
- Gender
- Male
- Meaning
- Sea Friend
- Origin
- English
About the Name Irving
Irving is an English name meaning sea friend — likely derived from the Scottish place name Irvine in Ayrshire, itself from a river name of Brythonic Celtic origin, and repurposed as a given name through the common Victorian practice of elevating surnames into first names. The meaning sea friend reflects the coastal associations of the original Scottish place, and the name carries the same solid, unpretentious character as other Anglo-Scottish surname-names that became fashionable in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Its presence in American naming in the early 1900s fit naturally alongside other surnames-as-given-names that conveyed Anglo-Scottish heritage and a certain understated respectability.
Irving Saladino is a Panamanian former long jumper, born on January 23, 1983, in Colon, Panama — discovered by coach Wilfre Esquina and developed into one of Panama's most celebrated track-and-field athletes, giving the name a presence in international athletics in the twenty-first century.
In US Social Security records, Irving first entered the male top-1000 in 1911, immediately reaching its peak rank of #93 that year before beginning a very long, gradual decline over the following nine decades. It maintained a presence in the top-1000 through 2005 — its final tracked year at #985 — accumulating 3,513 top-1000 births across that nearly century-long run. That arc, from a 1911 peak to a 2005 exit, makes it one of the longer-lasting names in this group. The recorded variant is Irwin, a closely related form sharing the same Celtic-origin place-name root and the same general sound, offering a slight spelling alternative within the same naming tradition.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Irving
US Popularity History (1911–2005)
Annual US births named Irving by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 1914 with 1,156 boys named Irving (boy rank #100 that year).
Where it stands today: in 2005, ranked #985 for boys (176 US births). That's 885 places below its 1914 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Irwin | Sea Lover | Male | Anglo |
Famous People Named Irving
1 notable figure from history and culture who share the name Irving.
- Irving Saladino is Panama’s first and only Olympic gold medalist.
Looking for names like Irving?
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 Irving to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Irving against today's most popular boys-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).