Socrates
About 725 American babies have been named Socrates since 1914, most of them around 1922. It has not appeared in the national data since 2022. About 490 Socrateses are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 32.
Popularity, 1880–2025
boys named Socrates
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 725
- Estimated living today
- 490
- Median age today
- 32
- Peak year
- 1922
- Best rank
- 1,952nd
- Rank in 2025
- unranked
- First recorded
- 1914
How old the living Socrateses are
born that year still alive today
Of the 725 babies given the name since 1914, about 490 are alive — 67 in every hundred. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1993 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
Via Latin Socrates, from Ancient Greek Σωκράτης.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Socratess
- Socrates (469 BC–398 BC)5th-century BCE Greek philosopher
- Sócrates (1954–2011)Brazilian association football player
- José Sócrates (born 1957)Prime Minister of Portugal from 2005 to 2011
- Socrates of Constantinople (380–440)5th century Greek Christian church historian
- Socrates B. Villegas (born 1960)Catholic archbishop
- Socrates ChrestusGreek prince and king of Bithynia
People named Socrates with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Socrates is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Socrates is most concentrated in New York (5.9×), California (4.4×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1922
The most popular boys’ names the year Socrates peaked:
Socrates elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| England and Wales boys | Socrates | 3 | 4,749th |
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.
Where Socrates lives in Spain
Not a count of births but of people: 185 men called Socrates were living in Spain on 1 January 2025, of every age, born in any year. Where they live is not spread evenly.
Men: the provinces where it is densest
| Province | Spelling | People | Per thousand | Place there |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Albacete | Socrates | 5 | 0.025 | 1,578 |
| Murcia | Socrates | 16 | 0.020 | 2,046 |
| Castellón/Castelló | Socrates | 6 | 0.019 | 2,463 |
| Alicante/Alacant | Socrates | 14 | 0.014 | 3,563 |
| Pontevedra | Socrates | 6 | 0.013 | 2,273 |
| Asturias | Socrates | 6 | 0.012 | 2,807 |
Listed in 9 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 43 it is either held by fewer than 5 people – the point below which the source withholds a name – or it fell past the 5,000 names the source will print for one province. Neither means nobody there is called it. The rate is the source's own, not a share worked out here.
Related names
Socrates 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.