Bowie

Where Bowie comes from

Bowie 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. 1920
    First appearance
    #4,286 among boys, 5 babies — the first year at least five got the name.
  2. 1926
    Bowie Kuhn born
    American baseball commissioner
  3. 1973
    Bowie Tsang born
    Taiwanese and Hong Kong actress and singer
  4. 2014
    Mostly boys from here
    Until now more girls than boys got the name; from this year it's the other way round, and has stayed that way.
  5. 2021
    Peak, #951
    237 babies named Bowie — more than any year before or since.
In the dictionary

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

Namesakes
  • Bowie Kuhn · American baseball commissioner, 1926–2007
  • Bowie Tsang · Taiwanese and Hong Kong actress and singer, born 1973
  • Bowie Wu · Hong Kong male actor, programme host, and singer, born 1932
  • Bowie Cheung · Hong Kong actress, born 1991

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.