Tempie
Feminine · “self-command”
Tempie is Temperance worn down to the form a household actually used, and it is worth knowing that the virtue named here is the old one. Temperance meant self-command and proportion across the whole of a life, not abstinence from any single thing. The mass campaign that took the word over in the nineteenth century narrowed it, and the narrow sense is the one everybody now hears first.
How old is the name Tempie?
Tempie was already in use when US birth records began in 1880 — it is at least 145 years old. The typical Tempie alive today was born around 1921, making them about 104 years old. About 400 people named Tempie are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Tempie most popular?
Tempie peaked in 1884, reaching #479 nationally. See the whole 1884 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
From Temperance, an English virtue name to Tempie
The story of Tempie
American registers of the period show something odd about the virtue names that Puritan households had brought across. The formal versions are thin on the ground while the household forms are everywhere: Tempie with no Temperance standing behind her, Patty with no Patience. The reason is that what reached the page was what the family said at the counter, and no family said Temperance to each other across a kitchen. That is a general fact about nineteenth-century records and it is easy to overlook. The register is a transcript of speech, not a copy of a document. Meanwhile the temperance campaign, which by then had made the word entirely its own, did nothing whatever for the name. The movement was at its loudest in the very decades the name was going out.
Meaning
self-command
Temperance is one of the cardinal virtues, and in the sense it carried when it became a name it meant restraint and proportion generally rather than abstinence from drink. The word narrowed later, when a movement took it up, and the modern reading is a shrinking of the older one rather than a correction of it. Tempie has no separate meaning of its own; it is the household form of the longer name, and household forms carry the parent's sense unchanged.
How the name formed
- Temperance, an English virtue name
- Carried to America and shortened at home
- Tempie written on the register as the real name
- The formal form disappearing first
Pronouncing Tempie
TEM-pee
Two syllables, stress on the first. It is the household form of a name most people will not recognize, so expect to supply Temperance as an explanation rather than as an answer to how the name is said.
Nicknames for Tempie
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
- 191335 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #479reached in 1884
- Change vs 1986
- −16.7%5 in 2014, 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.
Tempies among us
people named Tempie 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
Tempie 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 short, warm and completely unambiguous in speech, which very few nineteenth-century revivals manage.
- It carries a genuine historical record rather than a modern reconstruction of one.
- It gives a family the virtue name without the sermon that Temperance itself now delivers on arrival.
- Almost nobody will know what it is short for, and the explanation involves a word that has since narrowed considerably.
- It reads as a nickname to modern ears, which is exactly what it once was, and some people will treat it as one for life.
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What they receive
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Tempie
Feminine
Frequently asked
- How many Tempies are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 400 people named Tempie are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Tempie in 2025?
- Tempie is rarely given in the US today — it does not rank in the top 2000 girl names.
- Will my child share the name Tempie with classmates?
- Tempie will almost certainly be the only one in school.
More T names
The most-given names starting with T, all years combined.
Teresa#908 · Theresa#1548 · Tiffany#878 · Tammy#3645 · Taylor#403 · Tina#2778 · Tracy#2153 · Thelma#4661
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Tempie? See the current top 100.
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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