Hortense
About 6,313 American babies have been named Hortense since 1880, most of them around 1919. It has not appeared in the national data since 1976. About 770 Hortenses are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 78.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Hortense
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 6,313
- Estimated living today
- 770
- Median age today
- 78
- Peak year
- 1919
- Best rank
- 435th
- Rank in 2025
- unranked
- First recorded
- 1880
How old the living Hortenses are
born that year still alive today
Of the 6,313 babies given the name since 1880, about 770 are alive — 12 in every hundred. Roughly 0 of them are children and 670 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1947 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 French
From the French form of the Latin Hortēnsia, feminine form of Hortēnsius (“name of a Roman gens”), probably derived from hortēnsis (“having to do with gardens”) on the basis that the first to bear the name was a gardener.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Hortenses
- Hortense de Beauharnais (1783–1837)queen consort of the Netherlands
- Hortense Mancini (1646–1699)Mistress of Charles II of England
- Hortense Schneider (1833–1920)singer
- Hortense Haudebourt-Lescot (1784–1845)French painter
- Hortense Allart (1801–1879)French-Italian writer and feminist
People named Hortense with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Hortense is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Hortense is most concentrated in Texas (3.0×), Virginia (2.9×), Missouri (2.6×), New York (2.4×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1919
The most popular girls’ names the year Hortense peaked:
Hortense elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| France girls | Hortense | 15,345 | 113th |
| Belgium girls | Hortense | 307 | 412th |
| France boys | Hortense | 65 | 1,567th |
| Switzerland girls | Hortense | 34 | 995th |
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.
Hortense: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German girls | Switzerland | Hortense | 4 | 0.000% | 1,050th |
| French girls | Switzerland | Hortense | 30 | 0.007% | 331st |
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.
Hortense: rank by region
In 2025, Hortense was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wallonia | Hortense | 149 | 17 |
In 2025, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Hortense appears in the lists for Province of Hainaut (85th) and Province of Liège (157th).
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.
Related names
Hortense 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.