The name Felix comes from the Roman cognomen ‘felix’ meaning ‘lucky, successful’ in Latin. Due to its favourable meaning, this name was also popular among early Christians.
Felix is a first name typically given to boys, but in rare cases also used as a girls name.
The name Felix isn’t among the current fashionable names in our top 10 stats, but nonetheless, it’s still very popular and common. In our SmartGenius ranking of all boys names, Felix ranks 238. Recently, out of every 10,000 newborn boys, approximately 9 were named Felix. In the entire USA, approximately 70,034 people – children, adults and seniors – currently bear the name Felix. That is 0.02 % of all living Americans.
The name Felix comes from the Roman cognomen ‘felix’ meaning ‘lucky, successful’ in Latin. Due to its favourable meaning, this name was also popular among early Christians.
What is a cognomen? A cognomen is a part of the typical name in ancient Rome. It was placed after the praenomen (first name) and nomen (family name). Originally, they were nicknames, for example 'caesar' for 'the hairy', and 'nervus' for 'the strong'.
For more than 140 years, parents decide to name their son Felix annualy. This means that there have been boys named Felix who witnessed the first Labor Day parade in the U.S. or followed Albert Einstein's career. The name has 'always been there', but never ranked in the top 100, and thus men named Felix have consistently been special. The name was particularly popular a long time ago in the 19th century. In one particular year, long before the first passenger flight and even before there was the first real radio, parents liked Felix even more than any other time: in 1884, it holds its present record at rank #130 in the list of the most popular boys' names.
In years where the graph has no value, the name Felix was given less than five times or even none at all in the entire USA.
Felix has never been ranked higher than #130. In 2022, he rivaled the 188 names that preceded him on the list. In total, 1,967 boys named Felix were born in this year. For comparison: 30 years earlier, in 1992, when possibly the parents of the now very young Felix were born, there have been 690 newborns who received this name.
The name Felix may not be in the top rankings of the most popular boys’ names, but it is one of the few male given names, along with only 385 others, that can be found in every single state in the U.S. from Alaska to Florida and from California to New York. Of course, the name occurs more frequently in some states than in others – and Felix is apparently especially popular in New Mexico. Although the name is not one of the top 100 most popular men’s names here either, one in 619 men in New Mexico is called Felix. In total, that’s 1,496 people who feel addressed when the name Felix is shouted loudly across New Mexico and who ensure that their name makes it to #162 in our SmartGenius ranking of the most common male names in this nice state. If you asked all people in the entire U.S. for their first name, you would hear Felix as the answer a total of 70,034 times. This places Felix at #361 in our SmartGenius statistics for the most popular male names in the whole of the USA. This is true for all currently living people across all states and age groups – the recent popularity of the name Felix as a baby name is, of course, a bit different, as you can see from the statistics above.
Well, you might say, you probably figured that out yourself! But what you might not know is: The letter F is quite rare as a first letter for boys' names: only 1.5% of all common boys' names in the US begin with an F. By the way, the most common first letters of boys' names are J, A and D, while X, U and Q are the least common initials of boys' names.
With five letters, the name Felix is comparatively short. In fact, 17.0% of all common first names in the US consist of exactly five letters. Only 7% of all first names are even shorter, while 75% have more than five letters. On average, first names in the US (not counting hyphenated names) are 6.5 letters long. There are no significant differences between boys' and girls' names.
Therefore: As 1.5% of all boys' names begin with an F, this initial letter is significantly less common than the other letters on average. However, individual boys' names with F are really popular, the most common currently being Frank.
If your name is Felix and someone asks after your name, you can of course just tell them what it is. But sometimes that isn't so easy - what if it's too loud, and you don't understand them well? Or what if the other person is so far away that you can see them but not hear them? In these situations, you can communicate your name in so many other ways: you call spell it, sign it, or even use a flag to wave it...
So that everyone really understands you when you have to spell the name Felix, you can simply say:
Fox
Elephant
Lion
Igloo
Xylophone
Braille is made up of dots, which the blind and visually impaired can feel to read words.
Felix
Felix
Just use American Sign Language!
These flags are used for maritime communication - each flag represents a letter.
F
E
L
I
X
In the navy, sailors of two ships might wave flags to each other to send messages. A sailor holds two flags in specific positions to represent different letters.
F
E
L
I
X
In Morse code, letters and other characters are represented only by a series of short and long tones. For example, a short tone followed by a long tone stands for the letter A. Felix sounds like this:
