Winifred
Winifred reached its high-water mark in 1918 at number 144, and has been recorded 46,200 times in all. In 2025 it ranked 922nd. About 11,000 Winifreds are alive in the United States today, and half of them are over 68.
Popularity, 1880–2025
girls named Winifred boys named Winifred
By the numbers
- Total US births
- 46,200
- Estimated living today
- 11,000
- Median age today
- 68
- Peak year
- 1918
- Best rank
- 144th
- Rank in 2025
- 922nd
- First recorded
- 1880
- Girls / boys
- 45,094 / 1,106
How old the living Winifreds are
born that year still alive today
Of the 46,200 babies given the name since 1880, about 11,000 are alive — 23 in every hundred. Roughly 2,600 of them are children and 5,900 are 65 or over. The dotted line is the median: half were born before 1957 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 Welsh
From Old English Winfriþ, from Welsh Gwenfrewi.
Etymology from Wiktionary, used under CC BY-SA 4.0.
Notable Winifreds
- Winifred Wagner (1897–1980)Wife of Siegfried Wagner
- Winifred McNair (1877–1954)English tennis player
- Winifred Holtby (1898–1935)British writer
- Winifred Asprey (1917–2007)American computer scientist and mathematician
- Winifred Atwell (1914–1983)Trinidad and Tobago musician
- Winifred Edgerton Merrill (1862–1951)American mathematician
- Winifred Mary Curtis (1905–2005)British–Australian botanist
- Winifred Greenwood (1885–1961)American actress
People named Winifred with articles in the most Wikipedia languages. Data from Wikidata (CC0).
Where Winifred is most common
Relative to how many babies each state records, Winifred is most concentrated in Hawaii (3.6×), Massachusetts (2.5×), New York (2.0×), Rhode Island (1.9×).
Total births recorded in each state since 1910. Browse names by state.
Names of 1918
The most popular girls’ names the year Winifred peaked:
Winifred elsewhere
| Country | Spelling | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| England and Wales girls | Winifred | 1,231 | 364th |
| Ireland girls | Winifred | 969 | 93rd |
| France girls | Winifred | 25 | 6,667th |
| Scotland girls | Winifred | 25 | 541st |
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.
Winifred by city
| City | Years | Births | Best rank |
|---|---|---|---|
| Berlin girls | 2017–2023 | 2 | 555th |
One city over a few years, so these are much smaller numbers than the national ones above and not comparable with them.
Winifred 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 | Winifred | 5 | 10 |
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
Winifred 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.