Whitley

Where Whitley comes from

Whitley hasn't made it into the dictionaries we draw on, and nobody well known enough for an encyclopedia has carried it yet — so for now its story is the one the SSA record tells. Names that spell a familiar sound a new way often live here for a while before anyone writes them down.

  • Vowel-ended
Along the way
  1. 1830
    Whitley Stokes born
    Irish Celticist
  2. 1945
    Whitley Strieber born
    American writer
  3. 1984
    First appearance
    #9,144 among girls, 6 babies — the first year at least five got the name.
  4. 1986
    Mostly girls from here
    Until now more boys than girls got the name; from this year it's the other way round, and has stayed that way.
  5. 1988
    Peak, #446
    508 babies named Whitley — more than any year before or since.
  6. 1992
    The fade
    The first year with half the peak's births — down to #842.
In the dictionary

No dictionary entry for this spelling — which is its own kind of rare.

Namesakes
  • Whitley Strieber · American writer, born 1945
  • Whitley Stokes · Irish Celticist, 1830–1909

Sources: the origin note and dictionary entry are quoted from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 4.0); the namesakes come from Wikidata (CC0); the milestones are worked out from the SSA record.