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Boys' name · 143,007 recorded births

Franklin

#359 in the US in 2025

Where Franklin stands

United States register · 1880–2025

#359boys’ names · US 2025

Franklin was the 359th most registered boys' name in the United States in 2025, on 909 births.

peak 1933 · 5,363188019532025

Its moment was 1933, when 5,363 babies were given it.

SOURCE·US Social Security Administration, national baby-name data·Public domain. retrieved from the Internet Archive's 2026 snapshot of ssa.gov (ssa.gov refuses automated requests); files unmodified. SSA lists a name only if it was given to at least 5 babies of that sex that year.·REVIEWED JUL 2026

#359US rank, 2025 (boys)
909US births in 2025
#33its best US rank, in 1933
1933peak year — 5,363 births
141,728US births since 1880
190NZ births since 2013
1,089E&W births, 2019–2025
Saved in this browser only — no account, nothing sent anywhere.

How Franklin's figures are worked out

  1. Counts come straight from the registrars: the US Social Security Administration (1880–2025) and the New Zealand Department of Internal Affairs (1900–2025). Nothing is scraped from another names site. The SSA files are the agency's own, retrieved from the Internet Archive's 2026 snapshot of ssa.gov (ssa.gov refuses automated requests); files unmodified.
  2. Ranks are computed against every name in that year's file, not just the ones this site publishes pages for — otherwise a rank would flatter every name we happen to list.
  3. The curve is drawn on births per 100,000 of that sex, not raw counts. Raw counts across eras are misleading: far more births were registered in 1957 than in 1890, so a flat count is a falling share.
  4. The reporting floor. Each registrar publishes a name only once it clears a threshold — 5 births of that sex in the US, 10 in New Zealand. Expressed as a share that threshold is itself a curve, and it is drawn on every chart here as the shaded band along the base.
  5. A missing year is a suppressed value, never a zero. Where the registrar published nothing, this site prints “below floor” or “<5”, the curve is broken rather than drawn across the gap, and the missing years are marked on the floor line. Franklin was under the floor in no year of its US record.
share per 100,000 = births ÷ all births of that sex that year × 100,000
reporting floor (share) = 5 ÷ all births of that sex that year × 100,000

Full methodology →

Franklin in the United States

188019001920194019601980200020200.0270541
Births per 100,000 of that sex, so eras compare fairly. The shaded band is the 5-birth reporting floor — under it the registrar publishes nothing, so a line that stops has left the record, not fallen to zero. Franklin in the United States, 1880–2025

Between 2016 and 2025 the name has been rising — up 36% as a share of boys' births.

SOURCE·US Social Security Administration, national baby-name data·Public domain. retrieved from the Internet Archive's 2026 snapshot of ssa.gov (ssa.gov refuses automated requests); files unmodified. SSA lists a name only if it was given to at least 5 babies of that sex that year.·REVIEWED JUL 2026

Franklin in New Zealand

In New Zealand, Franklin has been registered 190 times since 2013, peaking in 2021 with 23 births. It ranked #221 for boys in 2025 on 21 births.

1900192019401960198020002020NOT PUBLISHED — BELOW THE 10-BIRTH FLOOR0.066132
Births per 100,000 of that sex, so eras compare fairly. The shaded band is the 10-birth reporting floor — under it the registrar publishes nothing, so a line that stops has left the record, not fallen to zero. Franklin in New Zealand, 1900–2025

SOURCE·NZ Department of Internal Affairs, births by first name·CC BY 4.0. DIA lists a name only if it was given to at least 10 babies of that sex that year.·REVIEWED JUL 2026

Franklin in England & Wales

In England and Wales, Franklin was registered 1,089 times between 2019 and 2025, peaking in 2021 with 184 births. It ranked #287 for boys in 2025 on 158 births.

20200.03162
Births per 100,000 of that sex, so eras compare fairly. The shaded band is the 3-birth reporting floor — under it the registrar publishes nothing, so a line that stops has left the record, not fallen to zero. Franklin in England and Wales, 2019–2025

Seven years is a window, not a history. Unlike the American and New Zealand series this one cannot show you a name's arrival or its long decline — ONS publishes the full list only from 2019. England and Wales only: Scotland and Northern Ireland publish separately and are not counted here.

SOURCE·Office for National Statistics, baby names in England and Wales·Open Government Licence v3.0. ONS redacts any name given to 2 or fewer babies of that sex that year, under s40 of the Freedom of Information Act.·REVIEWED JUL 2026

Decade by decade in the US

US rank and births at each decade markSSA · JUL 2026
YearRankBirths
1880#112120
1890#15690
1900#151137
1910#170176
1920#1191,451
1930#1491,078
1940#872,391
1950#1531,624
1960#1941,537
1970#2081,219
1980#253879
1990#296852
2000#447530
2010#505510
2020#414718

<5 = the SSA published no figure for that year. It is a suppressed value, not a zero.

Where in the United States

The states that registered Franklin most often since 1880. These are lifetime totals, so they track state population as much as local taste — a name common in Wyoming will never out-count California.

StateBirths
New York8,799
Pennsylvania8,677
California7,355
North Carolina7,031
Ohio6,939
Georgia6,378
Texas6,334
Virginia5,910
South Carolina5,025
Illinois4,849

Questions about Franklin

How popular is the name Franklin?

Franklin ranked #359 for boys in the United States in 2025, on 909 births registered with the Social Security Administration.

When was Franklin most popular?

Franklin peaked in 1933, when 5,363 babies in the United States were given the name.

Is Franklin rising or falling?

Measured as a share of all boys' births, Franklin has been rising between 2016 and 2025 (+36%).

Same sex, peaking within a few years of 1933, at a comparable scale. Not a taste engine — this is arithmetic on peak years, which is why it will occasionally hand you something unfashionable that is nonetheless exactly of the period.

SOURCE·US SSA (1880–2025) + NZ DIA (1900–2025) birth registrations·ranks and shares computed from the source files, see method·REVIEWED JUL 2026

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Amit Sharma

Auckland real-estate agent and marketer. Builds free, sourced data tools.