Portia
Portia is a girl's name that peaked in 1989, when it was the 757th most popular in the United States. In 2025 it ranked 7,491st. About 8,500 Portias are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 46.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Portia boys named Portia
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 10,635
- Estimated living today
- 8,500
- Median age today
- 46
- Peak year
- 1989
- Best rank
- 757th
- Rank in 2025
- 7,491st
- First recorded
- 1882
- Girls / boys
- 10,627 / 8
How old the living Portias are
born that year still alive today
Of the 10,635 babies given the name since 1882, about 8,500 are alive — 79 in every hundred. Roughly 600 of them are children and 2,200 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1979 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 Porcia, a feminine form of the gens name Porcius (the gens of the Cato the Elder and his famous descendants), from porcus (“pig”). The moon is named for the character in The Merchant of Venice.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Portias
- Portia de Rossi (born 1973)Australian-American actress
- Portia Simpson-Miller (born 1945)former prime minister of Jamaica
- Portia Doubleday (born 1988)American actress
- Portia Woodman (born 1991)New Zealand rugby union player
- Portia Modise (born 1983)South African footballer
People named Portia with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Portia is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Portia is most concentrated in North Carolina (3.5×), Georgia (2.5×), Alabama (2.5×), Maryland (2.4×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1989
The most popular girls’ names the year Portia peaked:
Portia elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| England and Wales girls | Portia | 498 | 866th |
| Ireland girls | Portia | 12 | 689th |
| Northern Ireland girls | Portia | 4 | 355th |
| Scotland girls | Portia | 4 | 553rd |
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.
Related names
Portia 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.