The English and Dutch name Phillip derived from the Greek name Philippos meaning ‘friend of horses’. It is composed of ‘philos’ meaning ‘friend, lover’ and ‘hippos’ meaning ‘horse’.
Phillip is a male first name. In very rare cases it is also used for girls.
The name Phillip 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, Phillip ranks 415. Recently, out of every 10,000 newborn boys, approximately 4 were named Phillip. In the entire USA, approximately 303,799 people – children, adults and seniors – currently bear the name Phillip. That is 0.09 % of all living Americans.
The English and Dutch name Phillip derived from the Greek name Philippos meaning ‘friend of horses’. It is composed of ‘philos’ meaning ‘friend, lover’ and ‘hippos’ meaning ‘horse’.
This spelling with... double L derives from the Jewish surname Phillips, which was particularly common in Germany and the Netherlands.
Appearing throughout the time in the United States, the name Phillip is a staple in the country: Boys have been given the name Phillip for more than 140 years, according to official U.S. naming statistics. Phillip is therefore one of only 442 boys’ names that have been given every year since 1880. Even beyond that, Phillip is a very special name that peaked in popularity some time ago in the 20th century. Placed at #64 Phillip 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 1950.
In years where the graph has no value, the name Phillip was given less than five times or even none at all in the entire USA.
There are only 386 different male names registered in every single state in the U.S., and Phillip is one of them. However, Phillip is not equally widespread in all states, but people in Alabama seem to particularly fancy this name – the 10,205 men called Phillip who live here are 0,349% of all male residents and push their name up to #58 in our SmartGenius statistics, easily placing it in the top 100 most common male names in Alabama. If you look at all the states in the USA together, you can currently find as many as 303,799 people with the name Phillip. Across all regions and age groups, this lands Phillip on position 105 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 P is quite rare as an initial letter for boys' names: only 1.5% of all common boys' names in the US begin with P, which means that this initial occurs only about half as often as the other letters on average. But P is by no means the rarest initial. While X, U and Q are the least common initials of boys' names, the most common first letters of boys' names are J, A and D.
With seven letters, the name Phillip has a typical length for first names in the US. In fact, 26% of all common first names consist of exactly seven letters. 52% of all first names are shorter, while 22% have eight letters or more. 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.
From this follows that if 1.5% of all boys' names begin with a P, this initial letter is less common than the other letters on average. Incidentally, of the comparatively few boys' names that begin with a P, Paul is currently the most common.
If your name is Phillip 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 Phillip, you can simply say:
Pig
Hat
Igloo
Lion
Lion
Igloo
Pig
Braille is made up of dots, which the blind and visually impaired can feel to read words.
Phillip
Phillip
Just use American Sign Language!
These flags are used for maritime communication - each flag represents a letter.
P
H
I
L
L
I
P
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.
P
H
I
L
L
I
P
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. Phillip sounds like this:
