Patience
- Pronunciation
- [Pa-tience]
- Gender
- Female
- Meaning
- Enduring
- Origin
- French
About the Name Patience
Patience is one of the classic virtue names, drawn directly from the English word for calm endurance and steadfastness. Its roots reach through Old French to Latin, where the underlying idea is the quiet strength to wait and to bear difficulty with grace. Like other virtue names cherished since the Puritan era, it carries an aspiration built right into its sound — a hope that a child will grow into the very quality the name names.
The name's appeal lies in that timeless moral resonance, paired with a soft, three-syllable elegance that feels both old-fashioned and gently modern. It belongs to the same warm tradition as Faith, Hope, and Grace, names that have enjoyed steady revival among parents drawn to meaning and a touch of vintage charm. Its recorded variant is the Spanish form Paciencia, which carries the same meaning into a warmer, more lyrical register.
Patience first entered the US Social Security top-1000 in 2000, reached its best rank of #578 in 2006, and remained in the rankings through 2014, when it appeared at #983. Along the way it stood at #887 in 2013 and #845 in 2012, and across that run it was given to roughly 5,058 girls. Its arc reflects the early-2000s revival of virtue names — a meaningful, character-rich choice with deep English roots and a hope written right into its sound.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Patience
US Popularity History (2000–2014)
Annual US births named Patience by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 2006 with 508 girls named Patience (girl rank #578 that year).
Where it stands today: in 2014, ranked #983 for girls (272 US births). That's 405 places below its 2006 peak.
Source: US Social Security Administration. Limitations: US birth-certificate data only; names appearing fewer than 5 times in a given year are suppressed for privacy; spelling variants are counted separately. For names that ranked outside the US top 100 before year 2000, only the years they reached the top 100 are shown — the chart may have gaps for less-popular historical names.
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Where in the US Is Patience Most Popular?
Average girl-name rank within each state across 2016–2025 SSA records. A lower number means the name appears closer to the top of that state's girls-name rankings — a per-capita measure that isn't biased toward large states. For Patience the strongest states are Mississippi, South Carolina, Arkansas.
Strongest girls-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Mississippi | #507 | 35 |
| 2 | South Carolina | #547 | 54 |
| 3 | Arkansas | #555 | 18 |
| 4 | Kentucky | #628 | 21 |
| 5 | Alabama | #657 | 47 |
| 6 | Oklahoma | #695 | 25 |
| 7 | Georgia | #741 | 114 |
| 8 | Missouri | #742 | 53 |
| 9 | Tennessee | #756 | 59 |
| 10 | Indiana | #805 | 33 |
Weakest girls-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Florida | #992 | 62 |
| 2 | North Carolina | #949 | 50 |
| 3 | Illinois | #927 | 34 |
| 4 | Louisiana | #893 | 38 |
| 5 | Pennsylvania | #884 | 33 |
| 6 | Michigan | #882 | 55 |
| 7 | Maryland | #874 | 18 |
| 8 | Ohio | #874 | 83 |
| 9 | Indiana | #805 | 33 |
| 10 | Tennessee | #756 | 59 |
Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Patience in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.
Variant Forms
| Name | Meaning | Gender | Origin |
|---|---|---|---|
| Paciencia | Patient | Female | Spanish |
Looking for names like Patience?
A dedicated page with 60+ related names — spelling variants, rhymes, alliterations, same-origin matches, and shared meaning concepts — lives at its own URL so each kind of similarity gets a deeper treatment than fits here.
Compare Patience to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Patience against today's most popular girls-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).
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