Florence
Feminine · “flowering”
Florence is overwhelmingly a girls’ name — 339,093 girls against 1,454 boys since 1880. See Florence as a boy name
Florence is a city, a name that fell further than almost any other and is now climbing back, and a woman who used statistics as a weapon. The nurse everybody knows about was, before anything else, a formidable analyst: she invented a kind of diagram specifically to make a government look at numbers it was ignoring, and it worked.
How old is the name Florence?
Florence was already in use when US birth records began in 1880 — it is at least 145 years old. The typical Florence alive today was born around 1918, making them about 107 years old. About 48,000 people named Florence are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Florence most popular?
Florence peaked in 1890, reaching #6 nationally. Today it ranks #391, 385 places below that high. See the whole 1890 chart.
Florence appears on these lists:
- Vintage names making a comeback
- Grandmother-chic: 1920s names ready to return
- The top-10 club: every name that made it
- Classics hiding in plain sight
- Canadian favorites the US overlooks
- British invasion: UK favorites still rare in the US
- all guides
Works in British families too:
Where it comes from
From The Latin name of an Italian city to Florence
The story of Florence
She went to the Crimea, found that far more soldiers were dying of disease than of wounds, and came back determined to prove it to a government that did not want to hear it. Ordinary tables of figures were being ignored, so she developed a circular diagram in which each month is a wedge and the area of the wedge shows the deaths, colored to separate disease from injury, and the shape of the thing is impossible to misread: an enormous blue mass of preventable death dwarfing everything else. She sent it to ministers, to the queen and to the press. She was elected the first woman member of the Royal Statistical Society, and the diagram is still taught. The nursing is the part everybody remembers and the arithmetic is what changed policy.
Meaning
flowering
The Latin name of the city means flowering or prosperous, and the reading is not in dispute. The personal name comes from the city rather than from the adjective directly, which is a distinction worth keeping: it is a place name used as a name, in the nineteenth-century manner, rather than a virtue or a description applied to a child.
How the name formed
- The Latin name of an Italian city
- Taken as a personal name in the nineteenth century
- Extremely common in America around nineteen hundred
- A long absence and a return, in Britain first
Related forms: Florence · Fiorenza · Florencia
Pronouncing Florence
FLOR-unce
Two syllables, stress on the first, with the second reduced almost to nothing. French says the same spelling with the stress at the back and a nasal vowel, which makes it a noticeably different name.
Nicknames for Florence
Moderate
What the data says
146 years of official birth records
The long climb, and where it stands now
The same years in position rather than babies
- First recorded
- 1880
- Most girls named
- 191811,318 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #6reached in 1890
- Change vs 2022
- +67.6%796 in 2025, from 475
Rank is a position, a count is a headcount, and they move independently — a name can hold its rank while the number of babies behind it falls. Source: U.S. Social Security Administration.
Florence in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Florence in French — same name
- Fiorenza in Italian — related form
- Florencia in Spanish — related form
Strongest US states over the last decade: California, Texas, New York. International figures from Office for National Statistics, Statistics Canada, National Records of Scotland. Sources
Florences among us
people named Florence are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 girl in 2,019 born in 2025 was named Florence
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Is it right for you
What happens to a name after it peaks
Fashion outlook
Florence has held the top-100 across 6 different decades — it has never depended on fashion, and names like that read the same at any age.
A scored estimate from 146 years of naming cycles — not a prophecy. Great names outlive statistics. How this is scored
Where Florence is headed
Florence looks set to keep climbing gently, with roughly 40% more babies a year by 2030 if the current curve holds.
Medium confidence — fitted on official counts through 2025.
A damped-trend projection of the official birth data — a sketch of momentum, not a promise. Every name's forecast, ranked.
Florence beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Florence in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US girls given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- It is completely familiar, universally spellable and needs no explaining.
- Flo, Florrie and Ren are three very different registers from one certificate.
- It carries a real city and a genuinely formidable historical bearer.
- It was associated with a very distant generation for most of the twentieth century, and that association is only now fading.
- The revival is much further along in Britain than in America.
- The spelling is on the register for boys as well, which reflects an older Irish usage.
Nobody names a baby alone.
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What they receive
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Florence
Feminine · #391 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Florences are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 48,000 people named Florence are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Florence in 2025?
- Florence ranks #391 among US girl names in 2025, with 796 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Florence?
- About 1 in every 2,019 US girls born in 2025 was named Florence — 796 in all.
- Will my child share the name Florence with classmates?
- Florence will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Florence
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Kaliyah#392 · Sunny#389 · Jocelyn#393 · Carmen#389 · Danna#394 · Londyn#388 · Regina#395 · Kalani#387
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Florence? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Florence and another name?
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Your gut first, the numbers after — the split shows once you pick.
US figures from the Social Security Administration; international figures from national statistics agencies. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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