Patricia

1,189,825 people in America carry this name — ranked #19 of 923.

A name with a settled sense and a settled sound.

Say it puht RIH shuh

3 syllables · the capitals are the stressed part

Phonetic transcription

P AH0 T R IH1 SH AH0 — ARPAbet, as published in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. The digit on a vowel marks its stress.

  • People counted 1,189,825 2020 Census
  • Rank #19 Very common
  • Per 100,000 393.9 about 1 in 279 people

What Patricia means and where it comes from

Latin in origin, reading literally as “noble”.

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.

Patricia through the years

1,577,515 babies were given this name since 1884. The busiest year was 1951, with 56,572 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 that fit Patricia

Three syllables already, so a short middle name keeps the whole from running long.

Better avoided

  • Patricia Ashley — runs together
  • Patricia Amy — runs together
  • Patricia Anna — 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

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

Is Patricia used for boys or for girls?

0.1% men
1,188,870 women

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

Where the name Patricia is most common in the US

In Rhode Island the name is given 1.6 times as often as it is across the country.

  • Rhode Island ×1.6
  • the District of Columbia ×1.6
  • Mississippi ×1.5
  • New Jersey ×1.5
  • Massachusetts ×1.5

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.

How Patricia is spelled

Patricia is how 67% of them spell it — 1,773,010 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.

Who carries it today

  • White alone (non-Hispanic) — 77.6%
  • Black or African American alone (non-Hispanic) — 8.6%
  • Hispanic or Latino origin — 10.6%
  • Two or more races — 1.8%
  • Asian and Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander alone — 0.9%

Categories are how people answered the census — a fact about the bearers, not a property of the name. Conclusions are ours, not the Census Bureau’s.

Full names people carry

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 Birth Plan Worksheet

Tick what matters, print it, hand it over. Nothing is stored anywhere.

Open Birth Plan Worksheet 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