Humanverse

Phaedra

Phaedra is a girl's name that peaked in 1971, when it was the 1,187th most popular in the United States. In 2025 it ranked 7,133rd. About 1,800 Phaedras are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 41.

Popularity, 1880–2025

Births per year, 1880 to 2025 0 25 50 75 100 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

girls named Phaedra

By the numbers

Total US births
1,902
Estimated living today
1,800
Median age today
41
Peak year
1971
Best rank
1,187th
Rank in 2025
7,133rd
First recorded
1963

How old the living Phaedras are

Born with the name each year, and how many of them are alive today, 1880 to 2025 0 25 50 75 100 1880 1900 1920 1940 1960 1980 2000 2020

born that year still alive today

Of the 1,902 babies given the name since 1963, about 1,800 are alive — 96 in every hundred. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1984 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 Ancient Greek

From Latin Phaedra, from Ancient Greek Φαίδρᾱ.

Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Where Phaedra is most common

Relative to how many babies each state records, Phaedra is most concentrated in California (3.4×), New York (1.8×), Florida (1.7×), Texas (1.6×).

Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.

Names of 1971

The most popular girls’ names the year Phaedra peaked:

All the names of 1971

Phaedra elsewhere

CountrySpelling BirthsBest rank
Belgium girls Phaedra +1 spelling 486 87th
England and Wales girls Phaedra 101 2,659th

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.

Phaedra: rank by region

In 2009, Phaedra was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.

Region Spelling Place Children
Flanders Phaedra 654 7

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.

Related names

Phaedra against another name

Two names on one chart, with the year one overtook the other.

Compare Phaedra with a name of your own

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.