Faith
- Pronunciation
- [Faith]
- Gender
- Female
- Meaning
- Faithful
- Origin
- English
About the Name Faith
Faith is one of the small group of English "virtue names" — abstract qualities directly used as personal names — that emerged during the Protestant Reformation in the 16th and 17th centuries, alongside Hope, Charity, Patience, Prudence, Mercy, and Grace. The Puritan religious context gave these names theological weight: "faith" in Christian theology is the doctrine of trust in God and salvation through belief, central to Reformed Protestant doctrine. The trio of "Faith, Hope, and Charity" (or Love) — drawn from Saint Paul's First Letter to the Corinthians 13:13 — became foundational Christian virtues and a recurring naming triplet for sisters.
The name's etymology runs back through Middle English feith from Old French feid from Latin fides (trust, faith). Faith has been continuously used in English-language Protestant naming since the 17th century, though it was rare in pre-Reformation Catholic naming. Notable bearers include British singer Faith Hill (born 1967, country-pop singer married to Tim McGraw), American journalist Faith Daniels, and the various medieval Saint Faiths (most notably Saint Faith of Conques, 3rd-century French Christian virgin-martyr).
Faith's modern American climb is part of the broader virtue-name surge alongside Trinity, Serenity, and Destiny. The name climbed from outside the US top 200 in 1990 to the US top 50 girls' rank by 2002 and has held a top-100 range since. The name's appeal is its compact theological depth combined with one short syllable that reads as both classical and contemporary. The name has been used predominantly in Protestant Christian American communities, though it has been adopted across denominational lines. Common nicknames are scarce since the name is already short — Faithy and the rare F each occasionally appear; the longer formal forms Faithful and Faiteanne are sometimes used. International forms include Foi (French), Fede (Italian/Spanish, also a separate name meaning "faith"), and Vera (Russian/Slavic, with the same meaning of "faith/truth").
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Faith
US Popularity History (1999–2025)
Annual US births named Faith by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 2003 with 5,597 girls named Faith (girl rank #50 that year).
Where it stands today: in 2025, ranked #254 for girls (1,212 US births). That's 204 places below its 2003 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 Faith 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 Faith the strongest states are Hawaii, Wyoming, Arkansas.
Strongest girls-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Hawaii | #72 | 106 |
| 2 | Wyoming | #86 | 22 |
| 3 | Arkansas | #120 | 216 |
| 4 | New Mexico | #121 | 156 |
| 5 | Alaska | #126 | 34 |
| 6 | Delaware | #128 | 45 |
| 7 | Florida | #130 | 1,281 |
| 8 | Maryland | #134 | 389 |
| 9 | District of Columbia | #135 | 53 |
| 10 | Montana | #141 | 30 |
Weakest girls-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Utah | #298 | 144 |
| 2 | Idaho | #287 | 69 |
| 3 | Kentucky | #253 | 190 |
| 4 | Massachusetts | #227 | 244 |
| 5 | Oregon | #227 | 163 |
| 6 | New Jersey | #218 | 373 |
| 7 | Kansas | #208 | 159 |
| 8 | Iowa | #202 | 165 |
| 9 | Alabama | #197 | 260 |
| 10 | Colorado | #190 | 299 |
Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Faith in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.
Variant Forms
Famous People Named Faith
1 notable figure from history and culture who share the name Faith.
- Faith Evans — R&B Singer (1973)
Looking for names like Faith?
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 Faith to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Faith 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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