Victor
337,308 people in America carry this name — ranked #148 of 923.
A name with a settled sense and a settled sound.
Say it VIHK tur
2 syllables · the capitals are the stressed part
Phonetic transcription
V IH1 K T ER0 — ARPAbet, as published in the CMU Pronouncing Dictionary. The digit on a vowel marks its stress.
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People counted 337,308 2020 Census
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Rank #148 Common
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As a surname 11,340 ranked #3,094 the other way round
Where Victor comes from and what it means
Latin in origin, reading literally as “conqueror”.
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.
Victor through the years
323,512 babies were given this name since 1880. The busiest year was 1990, with 4,472 of them.
Most people carrying it were born in the 1990s. 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 Victor
Two syllables sit with almost anything — the join matters more than the length.
- Victor Michael
- Victor John
- Victor James
- Victor David
- Victor William
- Victor Daniel
- Victor Joseph
- Victor Thomas
Better avoided
- Victor Robert — runs together
- Victor Richard — runs together
- Victor Ronald — 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.
Never out of use
Victor has been given in every decade on record — no fashion lifted it and none has dropped it.
Is Victor a boy's or a girl's name?
As recorded on census returns, not as anyone thinks the name ought to be used.
The same name elsewhere
- Viktor Slav
- Vittore Italian
- Vittoria Italian
- Vikentij Russian
- Victoria English
Forms of one name traced to the same root. Spellings are as the glossary printed them, so some look older than the versions in use today.
How to spell Victor
Victor is how 43% of them spell it — 789,954 people answer to the sound.
- Victoria 57%
- Victor 43%
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.
Names with the same rhythm as Victor
Nothing else in the file ends on the same sound — a rare thing, and useful if you want a first name nobody will echo.
- Michael 3,476,721
- David 2,813,017
- Robert 2,759,339
- William 2,240,114
- Mary 1,768,343
- Daniel 1,607,193
- Joseph 1,600,667
- Richard 1,575,998
- Thomas 1,506,606
- Matthew 1,315,151
Matched on phonemes, not spelling, so the lists follow the ear rather than the page.
Try it How Rare Is It?
Where this name sits between household and almost unheard of.
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