Fred
Fred reached its high-water mark in 1924 at number 32, and has been recorded 345,684 times in all. In 2025 it ranked 1,932nd. About 97,000 Freds are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 70.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Fred boys named Fred
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 345,684
- Estimated living today
- 97,000
- Median age today
- 70
- Peak year
- 1924
- Best rank
- 32nd
- Rank in 2025
- 1,932nd
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 2,029 / 343,655
How old the living Freds are
born that year still alive today
Of the 345,684 babies given the name since 1880, about 97,000 are alive — 28 in every hundred. Roughly 1,800 of them are children and 62,000 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1955 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.
Notable Freds
- Fred Astaire (1899–1987)American dancer, choreographer, actor, and singer
- Fred Rogers (1928–2003)American television personality
- Fred Hoyle (1915–2001)British astronomer
- Fred (born 1983)Brazilian association football player
- Fred Zinnemann (1907–1997)Austrian film director
- Fred Thompson (1942–2015)American politician and actor
- Fred Durst (born 1970)American singer, rapper, actor and director
- Fred Ramsdell (born 1960)American immunologist
People named Fred with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Fred is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Fred is most concentrated in Mississippi (1.7×), Wyoming (1.7×), Alabama (1.6×), West Virginia (1.6×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1924
The most popular boys’ names the year Fred peaked:
Fred elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| France boys | Fred | 4,340 | 170th |
| Norway boys | Fred | 1,900 | 39th |
| England and Wales boys | Fred | 1,647 | 477th |
| Ireland boys | Fred | 101 | 402nd |
| Switzerland boys | Fred | 43 | 971st |
| Scotland boys | Fred | 40 | 426th |
| Belgium boys | Fred | 5 | 1,343rd |
| France girls | Fred | 5 | 1,543rd |
| Northern Ireland boys | Fred | 3 | 398th |
| Poland boys | Fred | 2 birth registrations | 599th |
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.
Fred: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German boys | Switzerland | Fred | 31 | 0.002% | 723rd |
| French boys | Switzerland | Fred | 12 | 0.003% | 517th |
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.
Fred by city
| City | Years | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin boys | 2017–2023 | 25 | 405th |
One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.
Fred 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 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Finland boys | Fred | 183 | 235 |
A count of people on a register – 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
Fred 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.