Constance

89,619 people in America carry this name — ranked #592 of 923.

A name of the post-war decades.

Say it KAHNS tuhns

2 syllables · the capitals are the stressed part

Phonetic transcription

K AA1 N S T AH0 N S — ARPAbet, as published in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. The digit on a vowel marks its stress.

  • People counted 89,619 2020 Census
  • Rank #592 Familiar
  • As a surname 1,305 ranked #20,561 the other way round

The meaning and origin of Constance

Latin in origin, reading literally as “firm”.

Origins are a matter of scholarly argument rather than record, and a name can be traced more than one way. We state one reading and say where it came from.

Constance name popularity by year

139,753 babies were given this name since 1880. The busiest year was 1950, with 4,451 of them.

80 90 00 10 20 30 40 50s 60 70 80 90 00 10 20

Most people carrying it were born in the 1950s. It has been given less often of late.

Counted from Social Security card applications, so it covers births registered in the United States and leaves out names given to fewer than five babies in a year.

Middle names for Constance

Two syllables sit with almost anything — the join matters more than the length.

Better avoided

  • Constance Elizabeth — runs together
  • Constance Susan — runs together
  • Constance Sarah — runs together

Chosen by sound from the pronouncing dictionary, then ordered by how often the name is given. None of it is a rule — the ear decides.

Going quiet

Constance has more than halved in three decades. The people carrying it belong mostly to the Baby Boomers.

Is Constance a boy's or a girl's name?

0.2% men
89,482 women

As recorded on census returns, not as anyone thinks the name ought to be used.

How Constance is spelled

Constance is how 84% of them spell it — 106,518 people answer to the sound.

Each spelling is its own census entry — the counts never overlap, so the shares are of the group, not of the country.

Names about as common

The nearest entries above and below by number of people.

The states where Constance is most common

In Mississippi the name is given 2.2 times as often as it is across the country.

  • Mississippi ×2.2
  • the District of Columbia ×2.1
  • Alabama ×2.0
  • Louisiana ×1.7
  • Ohio ×1.6

Measured against the state's own share of births since 1960, so a small state can lead a big one. Counted from Social Security card applications.

The most common full names

The census counts first names and surnames separately and never together, so these are estimates: how often the two halves would meet if they paired at random. They do not — names cluster by community — so read them as an order of magnitude, not a headcount.

Try it How Rare Is It?

Where this name sits between household and almost unheard of.

Familiar

  • People counted89,619
  • Rank#592
  • Roughly1 in 3,698 people

Open the full entry

Open How Rare Is It? on its own page

Where this page gets its numbers

  • Counts, ranks and shares: U.S. Census Bureau, 2020 Census tabulations of first and last names occurring 100 or more times. Percentages, bands and groupings are our own arithmetic — the conclusions are ours, not the Bureau’s.
  • Pronunciation, syllables and rhyme groups: CMU Pronouncing Dictionary, Carnegie Mellon University. The plain-English respelling is ours.
  • Origins and the forms a name takes in other languages: Charlotte Yonge, History of Christian Names, 1884 — a public-domain work. Scholarship has moved on since, so read it as one reading of a name, not the last word.

Below a hundred people we publish no figure at all — the same threshold the Census Bureau applies to us. What each source covers
Other names of Latin origin