Ferdinand
The boy's name Ferdinand has been in the national records since 1880, with 8,909 births to its name. In 2025 it ranked 4,249th. About 2,800 Ferdinands are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 53.
Popularity, 1880–2025
boys named Ferdinand
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 8,909
- Estimated living today
- 2,800
- Median age today
- 53
- Peak year
- 1918
- Best rank
- 363rd
- Rank in 2025
- 4,249th
- First recorded
- 1880
How old the living Ferdinands are
born that year still alive today
Of the 8,909 babies given the name since 1880, about 2,800 are alive — 31 in every hundred. Roughly 410 of them are children and 890 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1972 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 Germanic languages
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Ferdinands
- Ferdinand Magellan (1480–1521)Portuguese explorer in the service of Spain
- Ferdinand Marcos (1917–1989)President of the Philippines from 1965 to 1986
- Ferdinand de Saussure (1857–1913)Swiss linguist and philosopher
- Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria (1863–1914)heir presumptive to the throne of Austria-Hungary
- Karl Ferdinand Braun (1850–1918)German physicist
- Louis-Ferdinand Céline (1894–1961)French writer
- Ferdinand II of Aragon (1452–1516)King of Aragon, Sicily, Naples, and Valencia
- Ferdinand Foch (1851–1929)French marchal and military theorist
People named Ferdinand with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Ferdinand is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Ferdinand is most concentrated in Louisiana (5.7×), New York (4.2×), North Dakota (2.9×), New Jersey (2.8×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1918
The most popular boys’ names the year Ferdinand peaked:
Ferdinand elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| France boys | Ferdinand | 16,310 | 69th |
| Austria boys | Ferdinand | 804 | 59th |
| Norway boys | Ferdinand | 693 | 166th |
| England and Wales boys | Ferdinand | 322 | 1,048th |
| Switzerland boys | Ferdinand | 182 | 449th |
| Belgium boys | Ferdinand | 111 | 872nd |
| France girls | Ferdinand | 60 | 1,252nd |
| Poland boys | Ferdinand | 2 birth registrations | 745th |
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.
Ferdinand: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German boys | Switzerland | Ferdinand | 149 | 0.012% | 369th |
| French boys | Switzerland | Ferdinand | 33 | 0.008% | 350th |
Parts of a country counted above, not extra births. The share is what makes the regions comparable: they differ in size by a factor of three hundred.
By canton, Ferdinand is most concentrated in Zurich, where 0.02% of children were given it – 69 of them.
Ferdinand: rank by region
In 2025, Ferdinand was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brussels | Ferdinand | 265 | 5 |
In 2025, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Ferdinand appears in the lists for Brussels-Capital Region (265th).
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children – and published nothing after. So a region missing here is one where the name fell outside what was published, not one where it went unused. Places are shared where names tie, and the further down a list a place is, the more names can share it.
Ferdinand by city
| City | Years | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin boys | 2017–2023 | 164 | 122nd |
One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.
Ferdinand among the living
How many people each country's register counts under the name, rather than how many were given it in any one year. Each register was read on one date, and they are not the same date.
| Country | Spelling | First forename | Any forename |
|---|---|---|---|
| the Netherlands boys | Ferdinand | 7,588 | 17,979 |
| Finland boys | Ferdinand | 21 | 710 |
| the Netherlands girls | Ferdinand | — | 164 |
A count of people on a register – the Netherlands on 1 January 2018, Finland on 4 August 2026 – and not of births, so it cannot be compared with the figures above. Names with very few bearers are withheld, and a dash in the first-forename column means the register would not say rather than that nobody goes by it.
Related names
Ferdinand 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.