Pinkie
Feminine · “a garden pink”
Pinkie is overwhelmingly a girls’ name — 3,881 girls against 11 boys since 1880.
The color is named after the flower, not the other way round. Pinks were garden flowers with fringed petals long before anyone used the word for a shade, and Pinkie is a name from that older world, when it was a pet name that families wrote onto certificates and kept.
How old is the name Pinkie?
Pinkie was already in use when US birth records began in 1880 — it is at least 145 years old. The typical Pinkie alive today was born around 1920, making them about 105 years old. About 800 people named Pinkie are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Pinkie most popular?
Pinkie peaked in 1880, reaching #352 nationally. See the whole 1880 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From pink to Pinkie
The story of Pinkie
The name's best-known bearer is a painting. Thomas Lawrence's portrait of a girl in a white dress and a pink sash, made in 1794, was nicknamed Pinkie almost at once and now hangs in California directly opposite Gainsborough's Blue Boy, the two of them the most reproduced English portraits in America. Whether that is why the name spread is not documented, but Pinkie was in American use from the beginning of the count, most strongly in the South, where affectionate names were commonly entered as the legal one. It was given to boys as well as girls in those years, which the modern ear does not expect.
Meaningscholars disagree
a garden pink, and by extension the color
The flower name came first, probably from the fringed or pinked edge of its petals, and the color took its name from the flower in the seventeenth century. Some Pinkies, though, are named from the surname Pinckney, and others from a childhood nickname with no flower behind it at all.
How the name formed
- pink
- Pinkie
Pronouncing Pinkie
PINK-ee
Two syllables, weight at the front, said exactly like the word. There is nothing to explain and nothing to correct.
Nicknames for Pinkie
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
- 192094 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #352reached in 1880
- Change vs 1987
- +16.7%7 in 1992, from 6
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.
Pinkies among us
people named Pinkie 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
Pinkie 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
- Everyone can spell it and say it on first hearing.
- The flower behind it is real, old and still grown, so the meaning can be shown rather than described.
- It has an unbroken run in American records from the first year they were kept.
- It reads to modern ears as a nickname rather than a full name, and formal settings will notice.
- The word has other jobs in English, including the smallest finger, and a child will hear about all of them.
- The spelling is recorded for boys as well as girls in the United States.
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What they receive
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Pinkie
Feminine
Frequently asked
- How many Pinkies are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 800 people named Pinkie are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Pinkie in 2025?
- Pinkie is rarely given in the US today — it does not rank in the top 2000 girl names.
- Will my child share the name Pinkie with classmates?
- Pinkie will almost certainly be the only one in school.
More P names
The most-given names starting with P, all years combined.
Patricia#1334 · Pamela#2239 · Phyllis#11932 · Peggy#8362 · Paula#853 · Pauline#2957 · Pearl#776 · Paige#346
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Pinkie? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Pinkie and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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