Florence
Florence reached its high-water mark in 1918 at number 14, and has been recorded 340,547 times in all. In 2025 it ranked 391st. About 45,000 Florences are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 75.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Florence boys named Florence
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 340,547
- Estimated living today
- 45,000
- Median age today
- 75
- Peak year
- 1918
- Best rank
- 14th
- Rank in 2025
- 391st
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 339,093 / 1,454
How old the living Florences are
born that year still alive today
Of the 340,547 babies given the name since 1880, about 45,000 are alive — 13 in every hundred. Roughly 5,300 of them are children and 31,000 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1950 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 Latin Flōrentia (as a given name, a feminine form of Flōrentius), from flōrens (“flowering, flourishing”), from flōs (“flower”), connected with English bloom and blossom.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Florences
- Florence Nightingale (1820–1910)English social reformer, statistician, and founder of modern nursing
- Florence Pugh (born 1996)British actress
- Florence Griffith Joyner (1959–1998)American track and field athlete
- Florence Devouard (born 1968)French open knowledge advocate, Chair of the Wikimedia Foundation Board of Trustees, co-founder of Wikimedia France
- Florence Welch (born 1986)British singer
- Florence Harding (1860–1924)First Lady of the United States from 1921 to 1923
- Florence Foster Jenkins (1868–1944)American soprano, renowned for her lack of musical skill and singing ability
- Florence Lawrence (1886–1938)Canadian-American actress
People named Florence with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Florence is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Florence is most concentrated in North Dakota (2.3×), Hawaii (2.2×), Pennsylvania (2.2×), Rhode Island (2.1×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1918
The most popular girls’ names the year Florence peaked:
Florence elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| France girls | Florence | 148,100 | 12th |
| England and Wales girls | Florence | 34,832 | 8th |
| Belgium girls | Florence | 2,248 | 55th |
| Scotland girls | Florence | 841 | 54th |
| New Zealand girls | Florence | 825 | 20th |
| Ireland girls | Florence | 682 | 163rd |
| Switzerland girls | Florence | 386 | 214th |
| Northern Ireland girls | Florence | 226 | 84th |
| Ireland boys | Florence | 123 | 117th |
| Poland girls | Florence | 30 birth registrations | 516th |
| France boys | Florence | 5 | 566th |
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.
Florence: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German girls | Switzerland | Florence | 300 | 0.024% | 184th |
| French girls | Switzerland | Florence | 86 | 0.020% | 113th |
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, Florence is most concentrated in Valais, where 0.05% of children were given it – 31 of them.
Florence: rank by region
In 2025, Florence was given 5 times or more in 2 regions of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Florence | 30 | 112 |
| Brussels | Florence | 244 | 5 |
In 2025, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Florence appears in the lists for Province of Antwerp (21st), Province of West Flanders (24th), Province of East Flanders (34th), Province of Limburg (53rd), Province of Flemish Brabant (86th) and Brussels-Capital Region (244th).
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children – and published nothing after. So a region missing here is one where the name fell outside what was published, not one where it went unused. Places are shared where names tie, and the further down a list a place is, the more names can share it.
Florence by city
| City | Years | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin girls | 2017–2023 | 5 | 494th |
One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.
Florence 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| the Netherlands girls | Florence | 1,343 | 2,960 |
| Finland girls | Florence | 46 | 145 |
| the Netherlands boys | Florence | 8 | 73 |
A count of people on a register – the Netherlands on 1 January 2018, 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.
Where Florence lives in Spain
Not a count of births but of people: 344 women called Florence were living in Spain on 1 January 2025, of every age, born in any year. Where they live is not spread evenly.
Women: the provinces where it is densest
| Province | Spelling | People | Per thousand | Place there |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Almería | Florence | 12 | 0.032 | 1,728 |
| Balears, Illes | Florence | 19 | 0.030 | 1,847 |
| Zaragoza | Florence | 13 | 0.026 | 1,749 |
| Palmas, Las | Florence | 14 | 0.024 | 2,929 |
| Barcelona | Florence | 72 | 0.024 | 1,976 |
| Madrid | Florence | 69 | 0.019 | 2,324 |
Listed in 14 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 38 it is either held by fewer than 5 people – the point below which the source withholds a name – or it fell past the 5,000 names the source will print for one province. Neither means nobody there is called it. The rate is the source's own, not a share worked out here.
Related names
Florence 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.