Tobi

Where Tobi comes from

Tobi 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. 1934
    First appearance
    #3,802 among girls, 6 babies — the first year at least five got the name.
  2. 1975
    Peak, #886
    150 babies named Tobi — more than any year before or since.
  3. 1978
    The fade
    The first year with half the peak's births — down to #1,633.
  4. 1994
    Tobi Bakre born
    Nigerian actor
  5. 1997
    Tobi Amusan born
    Nigerian athletics competitor
  6. 2020
    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.
In the dictionary

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

Namesakes
  • Tobi Amusan · Nigerian athletics competitor, born 1997
  • Tobi Bakre · Nigerian actor, born 1994
  • Tobi Vail · American musician, born 1969
  • Tobi Makinde · Nigerian actor and filmmaker, born 1991
  • Tobi Adebayo-Rowling · British association football player, born 1996

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.