Humanverse

Francesco vs Frankie

American parents have registered 79,430 Frankies since 1880, against 8,446 Francescos. Frankie is still ahead, with 805 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Francesco against Frankie, 1880 to 2025 0 300 600 900 1.2k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Francesco Frankie

Each line is every baby given the name that year, girls and boys added together — the only count that means the same thing for both names. A line breaks where the name fell below five babies in a year — the point at which the SSA stops publishing it — rather than being drawn through a figure nobody published. A single published year in a gap shows as a dot.

Who was ahead

Frankie has been the commoner name in every year either was published, 1880 to 2025. The lead has never changed hands.

The closest they came was 2003, when Francesco had 142 and Frankie had 295.

Side by side

  Francesco Frankie
Total US births 8,44679,430
Most in one year 1661,198
Babies in 2025 145805
Estimated living today 7,40050,000
Median age today 2753
Peak year 20061959
Best rank 1,073rd boys268th boys
Rank in 2025 1,328th920th
First recorded 19061880
Girls / boys 0 / 8,44637,162 / 42,268

A rank is a position within one sex’s list for one year, so the two rank rows are not subtracted from one another and the winning column is not marked on them. The living figure is a life-table estimate, not a count.

Which name is older

Half of the Frankies alive today are over 53; half the Francescos are over 27. That is 26 years between them: two names in use at the same time, worn by two different generations.

Where each one is strongest

How much commoner the name is in that state than it is nationally, from births recorded since 1910.

Both names abroad

Countries whose statistics office publishes both names, so the comparison can be made somewhere other than the United States.

Country Francesco Frankie
England and Wales 1,13825,854
France 3,055360
Ireland 571,300
Scotland 501,156
Switzerland 1,1225
Poland 34321

Every spelling a country files separately is added together, over whatever years that country publishes — which is not the same range in any two of them, so read the columns against each other and not the rows.

Compare something else

Related comparisons

Social Security Administration birth records, 1880–2025, public domain. Full histories: Francesco and Frankie.