Franklin comes from an English surname that was derived from Middle English ‘frankelin’ meaning ‘freeman’ or ‘free landowner’. It refers to people who are not of noble birth.
Franklin is a first name typically given to boys, but in rare cases also used as a girls name.
The name Franklin 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, Franklin ranks 417. Recently, out of every 10,000 newborn boys, approximately 4 were named Franklin. In the entire USA, approximately 131,806 people – children, adults and seniors – currently bear the name Franklin. That is 0.04 % of all living Americans.
Franklin comes from an English surname that was derived from Middle English ‘frankelin’ meaning ‘freeman’ or ‘free landowner’. It refers to people who are not of noble birth.
Franklin is known as.. a given name since the 18th century, it was often given in honor of Benjamin Franklin.
Appearing throughout the time in the United States, the name Franklin is a staple in the country: Boys have been given the name Franklin for more than 140 years, according to official U.S. naming statistics. Franklin is therefore one of only 442 boys’ names that have been given every year since 1880. Even beyond that, Franklin is a very special name that peaked in popularity some time ago in the 20th century. Placed at #32 Franklin easily made it into the top 100 boys' names of our SmartGenius statistics for male first names and has never been more popular than back in 1933.
In years where the graph has no value, the name Franklin was given less than five times or even none at all in the entire USA.
As many as 793 babies were named Franklin in the USA in 2022, ranking it at #388 on the list of the most popular boys' names for that year. However, it experienced its lowest point of popularity in 2012, when it was only ranked #512 of all male names in our SmartGenius statistics – back then only 494 boys were named Franklin.
There are only 386 different male names registered in every single state in the U.S., and Franklin is one of them. However, Franklin is not equally widespread in all states, but people in West Virginia seem to particularly fancy this name – the 4,339 men called Franklin who live here are 0,283% of all male residents and push their name up to #79 in our SmartGenius statistics, easily placing it in the top 100 most common male names in West Virginia. If you look at all the states in the USA together, you can currently find as many as 131,806 people with the name Franklin. Across all regions and age groups, this lands Franklin on position 236 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 eight letters, the name Franklin is long compared to other names. In fact, 14.5% of all common first names in the US consist of exactly eight letters. 78% of all first names are shorter, while only 8% of all boys’ and girls’ names use nine letters or even more. On average, first names in the US (not counting hyphenated names) are 6.5 letters long with 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 Franklin 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 Franklin, you can simply say:
Fox
Rocket
Apple
Nut
Koala
Lion
Igloo
Nut
Braille is made up of dots, which the blind and visually impaired can feel to read words.
Franklin
Franklin
Just use American Sign Language!
These flags are used for maritime communication - each flag represents a letter.
F
R
A
N
K
L
I
N
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
L
I
N
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. Franklin sounds like this:
