Florence
- Pronunciation
- [Flo-rence]
- Gender
- Female
- Meaning
- Flowering.
- Origin
- English
About the Name Florence
Florence derives from the Latin florens, meaning "flowering" or "flourishing" — from the verb florere, to bloom or to thrive. The city of Florence in Tuscany bears the same root (Latin Florentia), and the name Florence thus carries both a botanical meaning and a powerful geographic association with one of the centers of Renaissance art and culture. As a personal name it has been in use across Catholic Europe for centuries, bolstered by its Marian associations and its ties to the feast days of various saints named Florentia.
The name appears in the SSA top-1000 from 1880 and reached its national peak of #6 in 1890, accumulating nearly 299,000 recorded top-1000 births across its long chart life. Among its most celebrated bearers: Florence Nightingale (born 1820) was an English social reformer, statistician, and the founder of modern nursing whose pioneering work during the Crimean War (1854–1856) transformed the 19th-century medical profession and established the foundations of professional nursing. Florence Ballard (1943–1976) was an American singer who founded and sang lead and harmony in the original lineup of The Supremes, the Motown vocal group whose run of number-one hits in the mid-1960s rivaled the Beatles. The name has seen a strong recent resurgence: ranked #623 in 2022, #522 in 2023, and #435 in 2024.
Florence is one of the most notable naming comebacks in current SSA data — a Victorian classic that has returned to genuine popularity. Its three syllables and Latinate elegance give it a timeless quality. Recorded variants include Firenze, Flo, Flora, Florian, Flossie, and Flossy.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Florence
US Popularity History (1880–2025)
Annual US births named Florence by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 1918 with 11,318 girls named Florence (girl rank #14 that year).
Where it stands today: in 2025, ranked #391 for girls (796 US births). That's 377 places below its 1918 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 Florence 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 Florence the strongest states are Oregon, Utah, Kansas.
Strongest girls-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Oregon | #345 | 88 |
| 2 | Utah | #372 | 105 |
| 3 | Kansas | #398 | 34 |
| 4 | Nebraska | #399 | 17 |
| 5 | Washington | #469 | 148 |
| 6 | Minnesota | #483 | 125 |
| 7 | Iowa | #500 | 27 |
| 8 | Pennsylvania | #555 | 102 |
| 9 | Colorado | #570 | 106 |
| 10 | Massachusetts | #573 | 81 |
Weakest girls-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Florida | #859 | 75 |
| 2 | North Carolina | #773 | 71 |
| 3 | New Jersey | #761 | 53 |
| 4 | Virginia | #732 | 105 |
| 5 | Illinois | #727 | 139 |
| 6 | Ohio | #713 | 110 |
| 7 | California | #711 | 457 |
| 8 | Arizona | #710 | 37 |
| 9 | Georgia | #693 | 61 |
| 10 | Kentucky | #693 | 18 |
Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Florence in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.
Variant Forms
Famous People Named Florence
2 notable figures from history and culture who share the name Florence.
- Florence Ballard was an American vocalist and one of the founding members of the female pop vocal group, ‘The Supremes’.
- Florence Nightingale — Activist (1820)
Looking for names like Florence?
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 Florence to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Florence 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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