Frederick
About 267,165 American babies have been named Frederick since 1880, most of them around 1951. In 2025 it ranked 435th. About 132,000 Fredericks are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 60.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Frederick boys named Frederick
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 267,165
- Estimated living today
- 132,000
- Median age today
- 60
- Peak year
- 1951
- Best rank
- 78th
- Rank in 2025
- 435th
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 1,105 / 266,060
How old the living Fredericks are
born that year still alive today
Of the 267,165 babies given the name since 1880, about 132,000 are alive — 49 in every hundred. Roughly 10,000 of them are children and 55,000 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1965 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 Germanic languages
From German Friedrich, Friederich and influenced by Latin Friderīcus, Frederīcus, from Old High German Fridurih, from Frankish *Friþurīk, from Proto-Germanic *Friþurīks.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Fredericks
- Frederick II of Prussia (1712–1786)King of Prussia from 1740 to 1786
- Frederick Barbarossa (1122–1190)Holy Roman Emperor from 1155 to 1190
- Frederick Douglass (1818–1895)African-American social reformer, writer, and abolitionist (c. 1818–1895)
- Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor (1195–1250)King of Sicily, Holy Roman Emperor (1194–1250, 1220–1250)
- John Frederick William Herschel (1792–1871)English polymath, mathematician, astronomer, chemist, inventor and photographer
- Frederick Sanger (1918–2013)British biochemist
- Frederick Soddy (1877–1956)English radiochemist
- Frederick Banting (1891–1941)Canadian medical scientist and doctor
People named Frederick with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Frederick is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Frederick is most concentrated in Vermont (2.5×), Massachusetts (2.4×), Rhode Island (2.3×), Maine (2.3×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1951
The most popular boys’ names the year Frederick peaked:
Frederick elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| England and Wales boys | Frederick | 20,820 | 61st |
| France boys | Frederick +1 spelling | 4,855 | 191st |
| Ireland boys | Frederick | 709 | 107th |
| Scotland boys | Frederick | 603 | 169th |
| Northern Ireland boys | Frederick | 140 | 171st |
| Switzerland boys | Frederick | 139 | 622nd |
| New Zealand boys | Frederick | 99 | 93rd |
| Belgium boys | Frederick | 88 | 473rd |
| Poland boys | Frederick | 57 birth registrations | 352nd |
| France girls | Frederick | 10 | 2,531st |
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.
Frederick: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German boys | Switzerland | Frederick | 111 | 0.009% | 470th |
| French boys | Switzerland | Frederick | 26 | 0.006% | 372nd |
| Italian boys | Switzerland | Frederick | 2 | 0.003% | 180th |
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, Frederick is most concentrated in Zurich, where 0.02% of children were given it – 59 of them.
Frederick: rank by region
In 2001, Frederick was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Frederick | 636 | 6 |
In 2025, Frederick was given 2 times or more in 1 region of Poland.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Śląskie | Frederick | 254 | 2 |
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children, Poland below 2 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.
Frederick by city
| City | Years | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin boys | 2017–2023 | 96 | 142nd |
One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.
Frederick 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 | Frederick | 43 | 135 |
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 Frederick lives in Spain
Not a count of births but of people: 190 men called Frederick 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Palmas, Las | Frederick | 15 | 0.026 | 2,730 |
| Alicante/Alacant | Frederick | 20 | 0.020 | 2,702 |
| Murcia | Frederick | 12 | 0.015 | 2,527 |
| Málaga | Frederick | 11 | 0.013 | 3,271 |
| Zaragoza | Frederick | 6 | 0.012 | 3,477 |
| Balears, Illes | Frederick | 7 | 0.011 | 4,254 |
Listed in 9 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 43 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
Frederick 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.