Avery: How a Boys' Name Became a Girls' Name

"Is Avery a boy's name or a girl's name?" is a real question people type into search engines — and the honest answer is: it depends entirely on the year you ask.

In 1990, Avery was still a boys' name: 337 boys, 209 girls — 62% male, ranked #499 for boys. In 2025, it is 5,267 girls and 1,136 boys — 82% female, ranked #37 for girls and #289 for boys. Somewhere between those two points, a complete handover happened. The data lets us watch it happen, almost baby by baby.

The approach: a photo-finish in 1998

The 1990s were closer than the outcome suggests. The boys' Avery actually surged first — from 337 boys in 1990 to 900 in 1993 and a boys'-side peak of 1,183 in 1995. The girls were climbing underneath, from 209 to 514 over the same years.

Then the boys' side stalled and the girls' side didn't:

• 1997: 1,142 boys / 906 girls
• 1998: 1,228 boys / 1,224 girls — boys ahead by four babies
• 1999: 1,359 boys / 1,476 girls — the flip
• 2000: 1,355 boys / 1,813 girls

Four babies. That was the entire margin between "Avery is still (just) a boys' name" and the rest of history. From 1999 onward, the girls never gave the name back.

The takeover

What followed the flip was not a gentle drift but an occupation. By 2010 the girls' Avery had reached 6,667 babies and rank #23, against 1,680 boys. The girls' side peaked in 2014 at 9,578 babies — a top-20 name — while the boys' side settled into a long plateau around 1,100–1,800 a year, where it remains: 1,136 boys in 2025.

Notice what did not happen: the boys' Avery did not vanish. Eleven hundred boys a year is a real, continuing use — more babies than the name ever got, on either side, before 1993. The crossover didn't kill the boys' name. It just demoted it to the minority share of a name the culture now files as feminine.

The mechanics of a crossover

Avery shows the three acts every completed crossover follows in our data:

1. The name rises for boys first, usually as a surname-style pick (Avery is an old English surname, and surname names read masculine by default).
2. Girls' usage ignites — often because the sound fits girls' fashion of the moment (the -y ending, the soft V) — and once girls' growth outpaces boys', the percentages tip fast.
3. The tip becomes the fact. After 1999, each year of female majority made the name feel more feminine, which cooled boys' usage further — not to zero, but to a permanent minority. Crossovers in this dataset are a ratchet: we have no example of a name this far gone ever coming back.

Our advice: If you're considering Avery for a boy in 2026, go in with the real numbers. He will be one of roughly 1,100 boys a year with the name, in a country where 5,300 girls a year get it too — most people he meets will have first encountered Avery as a girl. That's not a reason to refuse the name; it is a reason to choose it deliberately, not under the impression that it's still 50/50. It hasn't been since 1998, when four babies decided it.

Both sides of the story: Avery (girl) and Avery (boy).

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Source: U.S. Social Security Administration · Data through 2025 · Updated 2026