In 2025, 49 US girls were named Gladys, making it the 3,224th most common girls’ name of the year, up 249 places from #3,473 in 2024. That is 4 more than the 45 girls named Gladys in 2024. Its best rank for girls was #11, reached in 1901. The most girls given the name in a single year was 8,819, in 1920. For comparison, it was #2,265 in 2015 and #182 in 1950.
Social Security card records list Gladys in every one of the 146 years from 1880 to 2025; in 1880 there were 20 babies with the name. In all, 267,741 US babies have been given the name, 99.6% of them girls and 0.4% boys. Its busiest decade was the 1920s, with 72,812 babies named Gladys.
Over the 10 years from 2016 to 2025, 613 US girls were named Gladys; the busiest of those years was 2020, with 78. In 2025 that was about 1 in 32,801 of the girls in SSA’s list for the year.
Related spellings in the SSA files include Gladis (3,076 babies since 1880). Rarer spellings such as Gladies, Gladyes and Gladyse are summarised on this page.
Meaning
Meaning not yet researched.
We publish a meaning only with a cited source and a confidence label, and never generate one. Meanings are being researched for the most common names first.
Wikidata records this spelling as a given name in Dutch. That is where the name is used, not necessarily where it comes from.