Phaedra
Feminine · “Greek "bright”
Phaedra means bright or shining, and it belongs to one of the darkest stories in Greek tragedy. She is the wife of Theseus who falls in love with her stepson Hippolytus, is refused, and destroys them both. Euripides, Seneca and Racine each wrote her, which makes her one of the most continuously rewritten characters in Western drama.
How old is the name Phaedra?
Phaedra first appears in US birth records in 1963 — 62 years ago. The typical Phaedra alive today was born around 1982, making them about 43 years old. About 1,800 people named Phaedra are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Phaedra most popular?
Phaedra peaked in 1971, reaching #1187 nationally. Today it ranks #7133, 5,946 places below that high. See the whole 1971 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From Φαίδρα (Phaidra) to Phaedra
The story of Phaedra
Phaedra is a daughter of Minos and a sister of Ariadne, which places her inside the Cretan cycle. Euripides' Hippolytus survives from 428 BC, Seneca rewrote it in Latin, and Racine's Phèdre of 1677 became a foundational text of French classical theater. The name stayed literary rather than living for most of that history. Its American appearance is twentieth-century and its 1971 peak follows the 1962 film Phaedra, which relocated the story to modern Greece and gave the name its first mass audience in English.
Meaning
Greek "bright, radiant"
From Greek phaidros, bright or beaming, related to phaos, light. The same root gives Phaethon and the modern word phosphorus by a different path. The etymology is settled and the irony of it — a name meaning brightness attached to a tragic figure — was noted in antiquity.
How the name formed
- ΦαίδραPhaidra
- Phaedra
Related forms: Φαίδρα · Phèdre · Fedra · Fedra
Pronouncing Phaedra
FAY-druh
Two syllables, stress on the first. The ph is an F and the ae is a long A in the English tradition; Greek would give FIGH-dra with the ai as in eye. Both are heard, and the English reading dominates.
Nicknames for Phaedra
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
- 1963
- Most girls named
- 197196 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #1187reached in 1971
- Change vs 2024
- −25.0%15 in 2025, from 20
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.
Phaedra in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Φαίδρα in Greek — same name
- Phèdre in French — same name
- Fedra in Italian — same name
- Fedra in Spanish — same name
Strongest US states over the last decade: California.
Phaedras among us
people named Phaedra are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 girl in 107,151 born in 2025 was named Phaedra
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Is it right for you
What happens to a name after it peaks
The Georgeanne test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Phaedra's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Georgeanne climbed just as high around 1945, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Georgeanne's path sketches the road Phaedra is walking now.
Phaedra sits in the calm middle of the cycle — neither chasing a wave nor sliding off one. Middle-of-the-cycle names age slowly and predictably.
A scored estimate from 146 years of naming cycles — not a prophecy. Great names outlive statistics. How this is scored
Phaedra beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Phaedra in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US girls given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- The meaning is settled, brief and entirely positive.
- It has a two-and-a-half-thousand-year literary presence.
- The sound is soft and uncommon without being difficult.
- The mythological story is genuinely tragic and involves incestuous desire and suicide.
- The ph spelling will be simplified to F by many people.
- The ae digraph invites the Greek pronunciation, which differs sharply.
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What they receive
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Phaedra
Feminine · #7133 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Phaedras are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 1,800 people named Phaedra are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Phaedra in 2025?
- Phaedra ranks #7133 among US girl names in 2025, with 15 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Phaedra?
- About 1 in every 107,151 US girls born in 2025 was named Phaedra — 15 in all.
- Will my child share the name Phaedra with classmates?
- Phaedra will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Phaedra
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Pennie#7133 · Zina#7133 · Elzie#7133 · Rosabel#7133 · Adelene#7133 · Cruz#7133 · Kansas#7133 · Ione#7133
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Phaedra? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Phaedra and another name?
See them side by side — full stats, history and a gentle verdict.
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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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