Bentley

Where Bentley comes from

Bentley 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. 1890
    First appearance
    #884 among boys, 6 babies — the first year at least five got the name.
  2. 1960
    Bentley Little born
    American writer
  3. 1967
    Bentley Mitchum born
    American actor and director
  4. 2012
    Peak, #75
    5,895 babies named Bentley — more than any year before or since.
  5. 2020
    The fade
    The first year with half the peak's births — down to #141.
In the dictionary

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

Namesakes
  • Bentley Little · American writer, born 1960
  • Bentley Mitchum · American actor and director, born 1967
  • Bentley Dean · movie director, producer & cinematographer, born 2000
  • Bentley Bahn · German footballer, born 1992
  • Bentley Layton · American theologian and philologist, 1941–2025

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.