Florence
Masculine · “flowering”
Florence is given to girls far more often — 339,093 girls against 1,454 boys since 1880. See Florence as a girl 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 1920, making them about 105 years old. About 100 people named Florence are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Florence most popular?
Florence peaked in 1901, reaching #407 nationally. See the whole 1901 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
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 boys named
- 192545 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #407reached in 1901
- Change vs 1968
- +20.0%6 in 2024, from 5
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
Florences among us
people named Florence are estimated to be alive in the US today
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Is it right for you
Questions parents actually ask
Fashion outlook
Florence sits outside the current charts, and that is its own kind of answer: naming cycles can only date the names they carried up. A name this rare has no decade stamped on it — it cannot go out of fashion, because it was never in.
Based on 146 years of naming cycles. How we read them
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
Masculine
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 100 people named Florence are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Florence in 2025?
- Florence is rarely given in the US today — it does not rank in the top 2000 boy names.
- Will my child share the name Florence with classmates?
- Florence will almost certainly be the only one in school.
More F names
The most-given names starting with F, all years combined.
Frank#513 · Fred#1932 · Francis#420 · Frederick#435 · Floyd#2230 · Francisco#322 · Franklin#359 · Fernando#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. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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