Girls in America, boys in Britain

In 2017, 3,143 American babies were called Finley. 1,859 of them were girls. That is 59%.

In England and Wales in 2025, Finley was the 18th most popular boys' name. It went to 1,733 boys. It went to six girls.

Finley is not on its own. We found 27 names that are mostly given to girls in America and mostly given to boys in England and Wales. They include Charlie, Riley, Oakley and Marley. We looked just as hard for names that go the other way. There are two.

How we counted

We took every name given to at least 200 American babies in 2017 and at least 50 babies in England and Wales in 2025. That is 896 names. For each one we counted the girls and the boys separately, straight from the official files, and worked out what share were girls. “Mostly” means more than half.

The American counts are from 2017, the most recent full American file we hold. The English and Welsh counts are from 2025. We come back to what has happened in America since 2017 further down.

The 27 names

The biggest of them here are boys' names that nobody in Britain would think twice about. Finley is 18th. Charlie is 22nd, with 1,679 boys and 49 girls. Oakley is 33rd, with 1,377 boys and 29 girls. In America in 2017 both Charlie and Oakley went to a few more girls than boys.

Riley is the biggest of the 27 in America. It went to 6,343 girls and 1,454 boys in 2017, so four babies in five were girls. Here it went to 619 boys and 270 girls, and it is 83rd for boys. Bailey was 94% girls in America and 77% boys here. Henley went to 594 American girls and 76 American boys. In England and Wales it went to 77 boys, and too few girls for the ONS to list. That means fewer than three.

Add the 27 together and America gave them to 39,787 girls and 11,030 boys. England and Wales gave them to 9,410 boys and 1,700 girls.

The rest are Robin, Harley, Sidney, Jamie, Morgan, Lennon, Reign, Shiloh, Azariah, Sunny, Taylor, Emerson, Hadley, Brooklyn, Leighton, Shay, Ashley, Presley, Arden and Frankie. Every one, with its counts, is in the table at the end. Ten of the 27 end in -ley.

Going the other way: two names

Only two names in the 896 are mostly boys in America and mostly girls here. Angel went to 5,240 American boys and 917 American girls in 2017. In England and Wales it went to 97 girls and 21 boys. Ira went to 211 American boys and 128 girls. Here it was 39 girls and 18 boys, which is a small number of babies, so we would not lean on it.

The lopsidedness goes further than names that switch completely. 107 of the 896 names are given in real numbers to both boys and girls, by which we mean at least one baby in ten is the other sex, in at least one of the two countries. America gives the bigger share of the name to girls in 96 of them. England and Wales does in 11.

When America moved

Six of the 27 were mostly boys' names in America as recently as 1990. In 1990 Riley was 23% girls. Charlie was 18%, Harley 35% and Frankie 22%. Emerson went to 130 American boys that year and too few girls to be listed, which means fewer than five. Sidney was 36% girls.

Look at the last stretch. Between 2010 and 2017 Charlie went from 32% girls to 52%, Frankie from 29% to 58% and Riley from 60% to 81%. Lennon, which barely registered in America in 1990, went from 27% girls in 2010 to 65% in 2017.

Eleven of the 27 hardly existed in America in 1990, with fewer than 100 babies each. Finley, Oakley and Lennon among them. Several of those started out as boys' names there too: Oakley was still 47% girls in 2010.

The other ten were already girls' names in America by 1990, including Ashley, Morgan, Bailey and Brooklyn. Some of those were boys' names much earlier. We wrote about that in the boys' names that became girls' names, and Britain has not followed on those either.

Britain has not followed

The 2024 file for England and Wales tells the same story for 26 of the 27. The one exception is Shiloh, which had slightly more girls than boys here in 2024 and slightly more boys in 2025, on small numbers both years.

Six of the 27 went to more than 500 babies here. The most evenly shared of those is Frankie. It went to 887 boys and 462 girls in 2025, 56th for boys and 100th for girls. Riley is next at 30% girls, then Robin at 28%. The biggest ones are not moving. Finley went to 1,886 boys and 7 girls in 2024, and 1,733 boys and 6 girls in 2025.

America since 2017

Our American counts stop in 2017, but the rankings run to 2025. A girls' rank and a boys' rank are not the same number of babies, so we only read them where the gap is wide.

Oakley has carried on. Its girls went from 474th in 2017 to 156th in 2025, and its boys from 479th to 454th. Riley, Lennon and Emerson are all still ranked far higher as girls' names than as boys'. Finley has gone the other way. Its girls fell from 159th to 415th, and its boys are now ranked higher, at 333rd. On those rankings Finley has probably tipped back towards the boys in America. Charlie is 133rd for girls and 145th for boys, too close to call.

What it means for you

A name can read as a boy's name on one side of the Atlantic and a girl's name on the other. If you are in England and Wales and you call your daughter Finley, Oakley or Charlie, she will be one of a handful. Six girls were called Finley here in 2025. In America in 2017 she would have been one of 1,859.

It works the other way too. A boy called Angel is ordinary in America and unusual here, where most Angels are girls. If you want a name that most people on both sides will read the same way, the table at the end shows which ones are split and by how much. For more names the two countries see differently, try the names Britain and America can't agree on.

All 27 names