The name Frank comes from an Old German name that referred to a member of the Germanic tribe, the Franks. They settled in the regions now called France, Belgium and the Netherlands in the 3rd and 4th century.
Frank is a first name typically given to boys, but in rare cases also used as a girls name.
The name Frank 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, Frank ranks 357. Recently, out of every 10,000 newborn boys, approximately 5 were named Frank. In total, there are currently 821,679 people – children, adults and seniors – named Frank living in the United States, which is approximately 0.25 % of the entire population.
The name Frank comes from an Old German name that referred to a member of the Germanic tribe, the Franks. They settled in the regions now called France, Belgium and the Netherlands in the 3rd and 4th century.
The Franks possibly... derived their tribal name from a type of spear that they used, from Proto-Germanic 'frankô'.
History tends to focus on the most famous and the best. But even those who play second fiddle leave their mark: Frank is one of those names without which the orchestra would be incomplete. In fact, it has reached the SmartGenius top ranking of #6 more than once, although the last time was a long time ago, way back in the 19th century in 1895. But even though the peak of its popularity was more than 100 years ago, the name Frank has been given to newborn boys every year since records began. Frank is a name of exceptional, enduring popularity that conveys the classic vibes of the 19th century.
In years where the graph has no value, the name Frank was given less than five times or even none at all in the entire USA.
Frank peaked in popularity a long time ago, but it still made it into the 21st century. In 2022, it ranked #418 in our statistics - perhaps a far cry from when your ancestors were children and Frank made it into the top ten more than once, but then again: Traditional names often turn out to be perennial favorites, so perhaps it is only a matter of time before Frank regains its top spot.
There are only 386 different male names registered in every single state in the U.S., and Frank is one of them. However, Frank is not equally widespread in all states, but people in New Jersey seem to particularly fancy this name – the 47,081 men called Frank who live here are 1,02% of all male residents and push their name up to #17 in our SmartGenius statistics, easily placing it in the top 100 most common male names in New Jersey. If you look at all the states in the USA together, you can currently find as many as 821,679 people with the name Frank. Across all regions and age groups, this lands Frank on position 37 in our SmartGenius ranking of the top male names – of course, the current popularity as a baby name for newborns looks somewhat 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 Frank 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 Frank 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 Frank, you can simply say:
Fox
Rocket
Apple
Nut
Koala
Braille is made up of dots, which the blind and visually impaired can feel to read words.
Frank
Frank
Just use American Sign Language!
These flags are used for maritime communication - each flag represents a letter.
F
R
A
N
K
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
R
A
N
K
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. Frank sounds like this:
