Benedict
Benedict is a boy's name that peaked in 2025, when it was the 814th most popular in the United States. In 2025 it ranked 814th. About 6,600 Benedicts are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 20.
Popularity, 1880–2025
boys named Benedict
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 10,475
- Estimated living today
- 6,600
- Median age today
- 20
- Peak year
- 2025
- Best rank
- 814th
- Rank in 2025
- 814th
- First recorded
- 1882
How old the living Benedicts are
born that year still alive today
Of the 10,475 babies given the name since 1882, about 6,600 are alive — 63 in every hundred. Roughly 3,000 of them are children and 1,100 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 2005 and half after.
An estimate, not a count. SSA births aged forward through SSA cohort life tables, which know nothing about who left the country or arrived in it — so for a name that mostly came to America rather than being born in it, this is a floor rather than a figure. Where you fall among living Americans.
Where the name comes from
Origin Latin
From Saint Benedict, founder of the Benedictine Order, from Latin Benedictus, from benedictus (“blessed, well spoken of”), from Latin benedīcō (“to bless, to speak well of”).
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Benedicts
- Benedict XVI (1927–2022)265 th pope of the Catholic Church
- Benedict XV (1854–1922)Pope of the Catholic Church from 1914 to 1922
- Benedict of Nursia (480–547)founder of Christian monasticism, founder of the Benedictine order
- Benedict XIV (1675–1758)pope of the Catholic Church from 1740 to 1758
- Benedict Cumberbatch (born 1976)English actor
- Benedict V (900–965)pope
- Benedict II (635–685)pope
- Benedict XIII (1649–1730)pope of the Catholic Church from 1724 to 1730
People named Benedict with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Benedict is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Benedict is most concentrated in Minnesota (3.4×), New York (3.2×), Hawaii (3.1×), Wisconsin (2.2×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 2025
The most popular boys’ names the year Benedict peaked:
Benedict elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| England and Wales boys | Benedict | 3,547 | 165th |
| France boys | Benedict +1 spelling | 340 | 552nd |
| Ireland boys | Benedict | 219 | 239th |
| Scotland boys | Benedict | 165 | 274th |
| Switzerland boys | Benedict | 107 | 788th |
| France girls | Benedict | 50 | 1,759th |
| England and Wales girls | Benedict | 9 | 5,545th |
| Northern Ireland boys | Benedict | 9 | 247th |
Counts come from each country's own records and are not comparable with the US figures above, which cover different years and a different definition of a recorded name. Where a country writes the name several ways, the spellings are added together and the most common is shown. A row marked name registrations is counting something else: Portugal ranks each of a child's two given names separately, so a girl registered Maria Leonor is in both the Maria row and the Leonor row, and that figure is not a number of children.
Benedict: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German boys | Switzerland | Benedict | 93 | 0.007% | 520th |
| French boys | Switzerland | Benedict | 13 | 0.003% | 704th |
| Italian boys | Switzerland | Benedict | 1 | 0.002% | 188th |
Parts of a country counted above, not extra births. The share is what makes the regions comparable: they differ in size by a factor of three hundred.
By canton, Benedict is most concentrated in Zurich, where 0.01% of children were given it – 28 of them.
Benedict by city
| City | Years | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin boys | 2017–2023 | 30 | 326th |
One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.
Benedict among the living
How many people each country's register counts under the name, rather than how many were given it in any one year. Each register was read on one date, and they are not the same date.
| Country | Spelling | First forename | Any forename |
|---|---|---|---|
| Finland boys | Benedict | 24 | 85 |
A count of people on a register – Finland on 4 August 2026 – and not of births, so it cannot be compared with the figures above. Names with very few bearers are withheld, and a dash in the first-forename column means the register would not say rather than that nobody goes by it.
Related names
Benedict against another name
Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.
Try it on yourself
Source: US Social Security Administration, national and state baby-name files, 1880–2025. Counts include only births registered with the SSA, and names with fewer than five births in a year are not published. The living estimate applies SSA cohort life tables to those births; it counts people born in the United States, so it misses anyone who arrived later and anyone who has left.