Precious
Precious is a girl's name that peaked in 2001, when it was the 392nd most popular in the United States. In 2025 it ranked 3,130th. About 19,000 Preciouses are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 28.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Precious boys named Precious
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 19,540
- Estimated living today
- 19,000
- Median age today
- 28
- Peak year
- 2001
- Best rank
- 392nd
- Rank in 2025
- 3,130th
- First recorded
- 1897
- Girls / boys
- 19,393 / 147
How old the living Preciouses are
born that year still alive today
Of the 19,540 babies given the name since 1897, about 19,000 are alive — 95 in every hundred. Roughly 2,600 of them are children and 290 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1997 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 English
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Preciouss
- Precious Achiuwa (born 1999)Nigerian basketball player
- Precious Dede (born 1980)Nigerian association football player
- Precious Wilson (born 1957)Jamaican singer
- Precious Lara Quigaman (born 1983)Filipina beauty pageant titleholder
People named Precious with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Precious is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Precious is most concentrated in Hawaii (3.3×), Louisiana (2.5×), Mississippi (2.2×), Florida (2.2×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 2001
The most popular girls’ names the year Precious peaked:
Precious elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| England and Wales girls | Precious | 1,612 | 404th |
| France girls | Precious | 160 | 2,367th |
| Ireland girls | Precious | 148 | 182nd |
| England and Wales boys | Precious | 35 | 1,991st |
| Scotland girls | Precious | 20 | 579th |
| Belgium girls | Precious | 15 | 1,458th |
| France boys | Precious | 15 | 6,842nd |
| Ireland boys | Precious | 13 | 393rd |
| Northern Ireland girls | Precious | 3 | 439th |
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.
Precious: rank by region
In 2009, Precious was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flanders | Precious | 867 | 5 |
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.
Precious 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 girls | Precious | 23 | 39 |
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
Precious 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.