Sidney vs. Sydney

Lately I've noticed more female movie characters named Sydney. Years ago, I associated the name Sidney with boys or men. Was I in error?

I asked The Google, and found two sites which give pretty much the same answer.

Sidney on babynameshub.com shows the name "Sidney" peaking around the year 1918 at about 1879 boys, then fading. "Sidney" for girls really took off in 1991. But wait! What about “Sydney” with a y?

Sydney on babynameshub.com shows “Sydney” taking off in 1984 and peaking in the year 2000 with over 10,000 girls named Sydney!

The site nameplayground.com has combined the boy and girl graphs for Sidney and Sydney. The trends are all the more startling when you read the fine print and realize that the vertical axes are different; the “girl” rates are actually 3 to 24 times higher than they seem.

The nameplayground.com pages give some other (mildly) interesting statistics: The average age of (male) Sidneys is 76.3 years old, the average age of (female) Sydneys is 20.9 years.

So yes, Sidney used to be a boy’s name, but Sydney became a predominantly girl’s name just in time for recently-released movies.

- Peyton