Franco
Franco reached its high-water mark in 2016 at number 702, and has been recorded 9,107 times in all. In 2025 it ranked 746th. About 8,800 Francos are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 15.
Popularity, 1880–2025
boys named Franco
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 9,107
- Estimated living today
- 8,800
- Median age today
- 15
- Peak year
- 2016
- Best rank
- 702nd
- Rank in 2025
- 746th
- First recorded
- 1923
How old the living Francos are
born that year still alive today
Of the 9,107 babies given the name since 1923, about 8,800 are alive — 97 in every hundred. Roughly 5,000 of them are children and 100 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 2010 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 Italian, Spanish
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Francos
- Franco Baresi (1960–2026)Italian association football player
- Franco Modigliani (1918–2003)Italian-American economist
- Franco Zeffirelli (1923–2019)Italian director and politician
- Franco Nero (born 1941)Italian actor
- Franco Armani (born 1986)Argentine soccer player
- Franco Frattini (1957–2022)Italian politician
- Franco Causio (born 1949)Italian footballer
- Franco Mastantuono (born 2007)Argentine association football player
People named Franco with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Franco is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Franco is most concentrated in Florida (3.4×), California (2.6×), Texas (2.4×), New Jersey (2.2×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 2016
The most popular boys’ names the year Franco peaked:
Franco elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| France boys | Franco | 2,385 | 179th |
| Italy boys | Franco | 2,163 | — |
| England and Wales boys | Franco | 632 | 757th |
| Switzerland boys | Franco | 187 | 444th |
| Scotland boys | Franco | 49 | 477th |
| Poland boys | Franco | 17 birth registrations | 507th |
| Belgium boys | Franco | 7 | 856th |
| Ireland boys | Franco | 3 | 829th |
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.
Franco: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German boys | Switzerland | Franco | 161 | 0.013% | 325th |
| French boys | Switzerland | Franco | 16 | 0.004% | 479th |
| Italian boys | Switzerland | Franco | 5 | 0.008% | 177th |
| Romansh boys | Switzerland | Franco | 5 | 0.134% | 22nd |
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, Franco is most concentrated in Zurich, where 0.01% of children were given it – 27 of them.
Franco: rank by region
In 1997, Franco was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wallonia | Franco | 342 | 6 |
In 2013, Franco was among the 10 most common names in 1 region of Italy.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Valle d'Aosta/Vallée d'Aoste | Franco | 10 | 1 |
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children, Italy after 10 names – 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.
Franco 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 | Franco | 19 | 36 |
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.
Where Franco lives in Spain
Not a count of births but of people: 1,663 men called Franco were living in Spain on 1 January 2025, of every age, born in any year. Where they live is not spread evenly.
Men: the provinces where it is densest
| Province | Spelling | People | Per thousand | Place there |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Santa Cruz de Tenerife | Franco | 142 | 0.266 | 383 |
| Balears, Illes | Franco | 123 | 0.198 | 430 |
| Ávila | Franco | 14 | 0.173 | 421 |
| Palmas, Las | Franco | 84 | 0.144 | 661 |
| Málaga | Franco | 115 | 0.131 | 498 |
| Barcelona | Franco | 298 | 0.102 | 662 |
Listed in 36 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 16 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
Franco 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.