Temperance is a first name for girls.
Temperance 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 1,066 in the SmartGenius statistics. This means there are 1,065 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 Temperance.
A very popular name in the 18th and 19th centuries, which was extremely rare in the 20th century: Temperance was taken from the English word meaning ‘moderation’ or ‘restraint’. It was first used by Puritans in 17th century England as one of their invented virtue names.
The growing popularity... of this name around 2010 was inspired by Temperance Brennan, the main character in the TV series 'Bones' (2005-2017).
Temperance is a fairly recent phenomenon. In the past, the name wasn't really on the radar of expectant parents. Then, unexpectedly, Temperance cried out for attention, reaching its peak in popularity at #786 in our SmartGenius statistics in the year 2012. People over 50 probably didn't have classmates named Temperance, for there were many years in which not a single parent chose this first name for their daughter. Although it also has never been in the top 100 of most popular first names, Temperance seems to have been in vogue for a while, especially since the beginning of the new millennium.
In years where the graph has no value, the name Temperance was given less than five times or even none at all in the entire USA.
124 babies were named Temperance in 2022 - that's 1 in 1,195,419 newborn girls. With this number, the girls' name Temperance ranked 1,519 in our SmartGenius first name statistics in 2022, the most recent year for which records are available.
You may not know anyone named Temperance, but there’s a good chance you live in the same state as someone with that name. In fact, 37 states are home to women and girls named Temperance. (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 Temperance living in one state or another. If your name is Temperance 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 Oregon, which has the most people named Temperance relative to the population, you still have to ask 21,012 women and girls their names before you hear Temperance as an answer just once.
Well, you might say, you probably figured that out yourself! But what you might not know is: The letter T is a quite popular first letter for girls' names. Because: 6.3% of all common girls’ names in the US begin with this letter. By the way, the most common first letters for girls’ names are A, S and M.
With ten letters, the name Temperance is obviously a particularly long first name used in the U.S.: only 1.8% of all common first names have exactly ten letters. 98% of all first names are shorter, while only 0.6% of all boys’ and girls’ names need more than ten letters. 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.
With 6.3% of all girls' names that begin with a T, this first letter is thus much more common than all 26 letters on average - and the most popular one of all the girls’ names starting with T is Teresa.
If your name is Temperance 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 Temperance, you can simply say:
Tiger
Elephant
Mouse
Pig
Elephant
Rocket
Apple
Nut
Cat
Elephant
Braille is made up of dots, which the blind and visually impaired can feel to read words.
Temperance
Temperance
Just use American Sign Language!
These flags are used for maritime communication - each flag represents a letter.
T
E
M
P
E
R
A
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.
T
E
M
P
E
R
A
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. Temperance sounds like this:
