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Franco vs Frankie

American parents have registered 79,430 Frankies since 1880, against 9,107 Francos. Frankie is still ahead, with 805 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

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

Franco 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 2016, when Franco had 353 and Frankie had 488.

Side by side

  Franco Frankie
Total US births 9,10779,430
Most in one year 3531,198
Babies in 2025 348805
Estimated living today 8,80050,000
Median age today 1553
Peak year 20161959
Best rank 702nd boys268th boys
Rank in 2025 746th920th
First recorded 19231880
Girls / boys 0 / 9,10737,162 / 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 Francos are over 15. That is 38 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 Franco Frankie
England and Wales 63225,854
France 2,385360
Ireland 31,300
Scotland 491,156
Switzerland 1875
Poland 1721

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: Franco and Frankie.