Prudence is a first name for girls.
Prudence is a well-known name in the US, but is still special. It is currently only given to every ten thousandth girl, and therefore ranks at 2,058 in the SmartGenius statistics. This means there are 2,057 girls names that are more common, but also tens of thousands that are much rarer. If you polled the whole US population – children, adults and seniors – you’d find less than one in 10,000 to be named Prudence.
Prudence is not an overly common name, in fact in some of the last 143 years it has been given so infrequently that it doesn't even show up in our statistics (here a name is only recorded in those years in which it was given to newborns at least five times). This was, for example, most recently the case in 1999, where the name Prudence was given at most four times in the entire USA, perhaps even less or not even once. (If you are Prudence and were born in the USA in 1999, please get in touch with us!) Before that, however, there was a time when the name was significantly more popular - way back in the 19th century, Prudence even made it into the top 1,000 of our SmartGenius statistics of the most popular girls' names: In 1880, it ranked on position 400 - a popularity it has never reached again since then.
In years where the graph has no value, the name Prudence was given less than five times or even none at all in the entire USA.
Although the name Prudence has a changeful history, it has clearly arrived in the present. In 2022, the name was given by young parents to their newborn children a remarkable 99 times and thus landed on position 1,773 in the SmartGenius ranking of the currently most popular female first names. However, the name is still so rare that the 99 girls with the name Prudence, who are celebrating their second birthday this year, can rightly feel very special, because it is highly likely that in their kindergarten they will be the only children with this name.
You may not know anyone named Prudence, but there’s a good chance you live in the same state as someone with that name. In fact, 25 states are home to women and girls named Prudence. (To be fair, a given name is only included in a state’s official statistics if there are at least five people with that name living in that state – so it’s entirely possible that there are still a few women and girls named Prudence living in one state or another. If your name is Prudence and you live outside of the states highlighted on the map, please let us know so we can refine our statistics even further). And while the first name is present in many states, it is still not one of the popular ones. In New York, which has the most people named Prudence relative to the population, you still have to ask 20,469 women and girls their names before you hear Prudence as an answer just once.
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 girls' names: only 1.6% of all common girls' names in the US begin with a P, which means that this initial occurs only about half as often as the other letters on average. Nevertheless, P is by no means the rarest initial. While A, S and M are the most common first letters of girls' names, Q, X and U are the least common initials of feminine first names.
With eight letters, the name Prudence 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.
That means that since 1.6% of all girls’ names begin with a P, this initial occurs less than half as often as the other letters on average. By the way, of the comparatively few girls' names that begin with a P, Patricia is currently the most common.
If your name is Prudence 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 Prudence, you can simply say:
Pig
Rocket
Unicorn
Dinosaur
Elephant
Nut
Cat
Elephant
Braille is made up of dots, which the blind and visually impaired can feel to read words.
Prudence
Prudence
Just use American Sign Language!
These flags are used for maritime communication - each flag represents a letter.
P
R
U
D
E
N
C
E
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
R
U
D
E
N
C
E
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. Prudence sounds like this:
