Terence
Terence reached its high-water mark in 1964 at number 241, and has been recorded 34,460 times in all. In 2025 it ranked 2,718th. About 27,000 Terences are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 53.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Terence boys named Terence
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 34,460
- Estimated living today
- 27,000
- Median age today
- 53
- Peak year
- 1964
- Best rank
- 241st
- Rank in 2025
- 2,718th
- First recorded
- 1885
- Girls / boys
- 170 / 34,290
How old the living Terences are
born that year still alive today
Of the 34,460 babies given the name since 1885, about 27,000 are alive — 79 in every hundred. Roughly 1,600 of them are children and 6,400 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1972 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
From Latin Terentius, a Roman family name of obscure origin, borne by a Roman playwright and by early Christian saints.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Terences
- Terence Hill (born 1939)Italian actor, film director, screenwriter and film producer
- Terence Tao (born 1975)Australian-American mathematician
- Terence Stamp (1938–2025)British actor
- Terence McKenna (1946–2000)American ethnobotanist and mystic
- Terence Young (1915–1994)British film director and screenwriter
- Terence Kongolo (born 1994)Dutch-Swiss association football player
- Terence Rattigan (1911–1977)British playwright, screenwriter
- Terence MacSwiney (1879–1920)Irish playwright, author and nationalist politician
People named Terence with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Terence is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Terence is most concentrated in the District of Columbia (2.5×), New York (2.1×), Hawaii (1.9×), New Jersey (1.8×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1964
The most popular boys’ names the year Terence peaked:
Terence elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| France boys | Terence +1 spelling | 3,375 | 447th |
| Ireland boys | Terence | 2,383 | 54th |
| New Zealand boys | Terence | 1,154 | 57th |
| England and Wales boys | Terence | 856 | 383rd |
| Scotland boys | Terence | 380 | 111th |
| Belgium boys | Terence +1 spelling | 69 | 760th |
| Northern Ireland boys | Terence | 60 | 179th |
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.
Terence: rank by region
In 2012, Terence was given 5 times or more in 1 region of Belgium.
| Region | Spelling | Place | Children |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wallonia | Terence | 393 | 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.
Terence by city
| City | Years | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin boys | 2017–2023 | 2 | 566th |
One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.
Terence 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 | Terence | 16 | 29 |
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.
Where Terence lives in Spain
Not a count of births but of people: 196 men called Terence 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Alicante/Alacant | Terence | 70 | 0.070 | 1,018 |
| Almería | Terence | 18 | 0.046 | 1,294 |
| Málaga | Terence | 33 | 0.038 | 1,349 |
| Santa Cruz de Tenerife | Terence | 10 | 0.019 | 3,506 |
| Murcia | Terence | 15 | 0.019 | 2,142 |
| Balears, Illes | Terence | 9 | 0.014 | 3,436 |
Listed in 7 of Spain's 52 provinces. In the other 45 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
Terence 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.