The name Virginia comes from the Roman family name Verginius or Virginius, which is of unknown meaning. It has long been associated with the Latin ‘virgo’ for ‘virgin’ or ‘maid’: The state of Virginia was named for Elizabeth I, the Virgin Queen.
Virginia is a female first name. In very rare cases it is also used for boys.
The name Virginia 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 girls names, Virginia ranks 508. Recently, out of every 10,000 newborn girls, approximately 4 were named Virginia. In total, there are currently 623,435 people – children, adults and seniors – named Virginia living in the United States, which is approximately 0.19 % of the entire population.
The name Virginia comes from the Roman family name Verginius or Virginius, which is of unknown meaning. It has long been associated with the Latin ‘virgo’ for ‘virgin’ or ‘maid’: The state of Virginia was named for Elizabeth I, the Virgin Queen.
This was the ... name of the first English baby born in the New World: Virginia Dare in 1587 on Roanoke Island.
The name Virginia belongs to the USA like the Constitution, baseball and the White House. Why? Well, quite simply, Virginia is one of only 432 girls names that have been given in the USA in every single year since the beginning of the official name statistics and thus since 1880. However, of course, the name was not equally widespread in all 143 years – the most popular it was far back in the last century: In 1921 Virginia was one of the top 10 most popular baby girl names in the entire United States - ranking #6 on our SmartGenius baby name charts.
In years where the graph has no value, the name Virginia was given less than five times or even none at all in the entire USA.
In 1921, when the name Virginia was at the height of its popularity, 19,070 newborns were named Virginia by their parents - in 2022, by contrast, the name was given only 569 times and Virginia occupied place 494 in our ranking of the most popular girls names.
Virginia is one of the most common names in the U.S. – in all states combined, 623,236 women would currently turn around if you called out VIRGINIA really loud. Across all states and age groups, this lands Virginia on position 39 in our SmartGenius ranking of the top female names – of course, the current popularity as a baby name for newborns looks somewhat different, as you can see from the statistics above. With so many women named Virginia, it’s no surprise that the name is widely used in every single state in the U.S., but would you have guessed that it’s especially popular in West Virginia? Here, 1,06% of all female residents bear the name Virginia – that is a total of 15,642 women with this popular name and no other state has as many women named Virginia relative to its population. But that’s not all the popularity: in West Virginia Virginia belongs to the top 10 of all womens names – the 15,642 elevate their name up to place #7 in the SmartGenius ranking of the most common female names for West Virginia.
Well, you might say, you probably figured that out yourself! But what you might not know is: The letter V is quite rare as an initial letter for girls' names: only 1.6% of all common girls' names in the US begin with V, which means that this initial occurs only about half as often as the other letters on average. But V is by no means the rarest initial. While Q, X and U are the least common initials of girls' names, the most common first letters of girls' names are A, S and M.
With eight letters, the name Virginia 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.
From this follows that if 1.6% of all girls' names begin with a V, this initial letter is less common than the other letters on average. Incidentally, of the comparatively few girls' names that begin with a V, Virginia is currently the most common.
If your name is Virginia 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 Virginia, you can simply say:
Violin
Igloo
Rocket
Goat
Igloo
Nut
Igloo
Apple
Braille is made up of dots, which the blind and visually impaired can feel to read words.
Virginia
Virginia
Just use American Sign Language!
These flags are used for maritime communication - each flag represents a letter.
V
I
R
G
I
N
I
A
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.
V
I
R
G
I
N
I
A
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. Virginia sounds like this:
