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Franklin vs Franky

American parents have registered 142,506 Franklins since 1880, against 3,144 Frankys. Franklin is still ahead, with 909 babies in 2025.

Babies given each name, 1880–2025

Births per year: Franklin against Franky, 1880 to 2025 0 1.5k 3k 4.5k 6k 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

Franklin Franky

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

Franklin 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 2007, when Franklin had 580 and Franky had 94.

Side by side

  Franklin Franky
Total US births 142,5063,144
Most in one year 5,38794
Babies in 2025 90937
Estimated living today 75,0002,800
Median age today 5328
Peak year 19332007
Best rank 33rd boys1,638th boys
Rank in 2025 359th3,181st
First recorded 18801925
Girls / boys 778 / 141,72870 / 3,074

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 Franklins alive today are over 53; half the Frankys are over 28. That is 25 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 Franklin Franky
England and Wales 2,599956
France 830695
Scotland 1719
Ireland 166

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: Franklin and Franky.