Patricia
Patricia is a girl's name that peaked in 1951, when it was the 3rd most popular in the United States. In 2025 it ranked 1,334th. About 1 million Patricias are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 70.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Patricia boys named Patricia
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 1,578,584
- Estimated living today
- 1 million
- Median age today
- 70
- Peak year
- 1951
- Best rank
- 3rd
- Rank in 2025
- 1,334th
- First recorded
- 1884
- Girls / boys
- 1,573,623 / 4,961
How old the living Patricias are
born that year still alive today
Of the 1,578,584 babies given the name since 1884, about 1 million are alive — 65 in every hundred. Roughly 6,100 of them are children and 697,000 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.
Where the name comes from
Origin Latin
later also seen as the feminine form of the saint's name Patrick.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Patricias
- Patricia Neal (1926–2010)American stage and film actress
- Patricia Arquette (born 1968)American actress
- Patricia Highsmith (1921–1995)American novelist and short story writer
- Patricia Kaas (born 1966)French singer
- Patricia Clarkson (born 1959)American actress
- Patricia Cornwell (born 1956)American novelist, journalist, biographer
- Patricia Heaton (born 1958)American actress
- Patricia Velásquez (born 1971)Venezuelan actress
People named Patricia with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Patricia is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Patricia is most concentrated in the District of Columbia (1.8×), Rhode Island (1.5×), Vermont (1.5×), Massachusetts (1.4×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1951
The most popular girls’ names the year Patricia peaked:
Patricia elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| France girls | Patricia | 207,515 | 8th |
| Spain girls | Patricia | 11,216 | 21st |
| Ireland girls | Patricia | 9,981 | 8th |
| New Zealand girls | Patricia | 5,007 | 7th |
| Austria girls | Patricia | 2,222 | 41st |
| England and Wales girls | Patricia | 1,333 | 443rd |
| Scotland girls | Patricia | 1,226 | 67th |
| Norway girls | Patricia | 559 | 264th |
| Switzerland girls | Patricia | 492 | 76th |
| Poland girls | Patricia | 331 birth registrations | 177th |
| Belgium girls | Patricia | 226 | 533rd |
| Sweden girls | Patricia | 85 | 95th |
| Northern Ireland girls | Patricia | 63 | 139th |
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.
Patricia: births by region
| Region | Country | Spelling | Births | Share of the region | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| German girls | Switzerland | Patricia | 387 | 0.031% | 71st |
| French girls | Switzerland | Patricia | 99 | 0.023% | 93rd |
| Italian girls | Switzerland | Patricia | 4 | 0.006% | 110th |
| Romansh girls | Switzerland | Patricia | 2 | 0.054% | 15th |
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, Patricia is most concentrated in Lucerne, where 0.04% of children were given it – 33 of them.
Patricia: rank by region
In 2018, Patricia was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brussels | Patricia | 218 | 7 |
In 2023, Patricia was given 2 times or more in 1 region of Poland.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lubelskie | Patricia | 145 | 2 |
In 2018, with the country taken in 11 areas rather than 3, Patricia appears in the lists for Brussels-Capital Region (218th).
Each of these is the top of a list the statistics office cut off somewhere – Belgium below 5 children, Poland below 2 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.
Patricia 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 girls | Patricia | 18,969 | 26,959 |
| Finland girls | Patricia | 559 | 1,915 |
| the Netherlands boys | Patricia | — | 152 |
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.
Where Patricia lives in Spain
Not a count of births but of people: 112,460 women called Patricia were living in Spain on 1 January 2025, of every age, born in any year. Where they live is not spread evenly.
Women: the provinces where it is densest
| Province | Spelling | People | Per thousand | Place there |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pontevedra | Patricia | 3,721 | 7.586 | 24 |
| Cantabria | Patricia | 2,146 | 7.009 | 24 |
| Asturias | Patricia | 3,618 | 6.819 | 23 |
| Valladolid | Patricia | 1,781 | 6.566 | 27 |
| Coruña, A | Patricia | 3,729 | 6.310 | 29 |
| Ávila | Patricia | 499 | 6.240 | 27 |
Listed in 52 of Spain's 52 provinces. The rate is the source's own, not a share worked out here.
Related names
Patricia 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.