Fred
given name · Latin script
Meaning: Short form of Frédéric, from Germanic frid + ric, 'peace' + 'power'
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/fɹɛd/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Fred is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in the United States than in any other country. In Bolivia it is the 4th most common given name.
- CACanada≈1 in 951(inferred from the name graph)
- GBUnited Kingdom≈1 in 1.5K
- DEGermany≈1 in 1.9K
carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). Where a country counts another spelling of the name rather than Fred itself, the figure is that spelling’s, and it is named. One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.
- United States (measured from records)
- #406 (measured from records)
- 7 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 585 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 951 (inferred from the name graph)
129,142 people, 2020
of 15M given names
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Canada, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
Locally spelled Freddy in EC Ecuador, CR Costa Rica, BO Bolivia and 1 more.
Spellings marked ● are how people bearing the name write it in our records, and ○ marks a model's transliteration; click a spelling to open its page.
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
Short form of Frédéric, from Germanic frid + ric, 'peace' + 'power'.
Sources 1
- Dictionnaire généalogique des prénoms
Attested across 15 languages in the etymology graph.
Often considered alongside
Names that people choosing a name often weigh against Fred, most often first. They share a style rather than an origin.
From the names suggested together in public name-advice forums, in English. A list of what people consider, not a measure of how common any name is.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Fred counted together with the spellings and other-language forms grouped with it. Where a register counted another spelling, the row names it.
Sorted by bearers: national registers' counts, and Mondonomo's estimates (≈, est.) where no register counts.
| Country | Most common spelling | Sources | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | #194 | 129,142 | 1 in 2.6K | 129K | Fred | 585 |
| NG Nigeria | — | ≈49,000 est. | ≈1 in 4.4K | — | Fred | 91 |
| EC Ecuador | #92 | 45,337as Freddy | 1 in 373 | 45K | Freddy | 91 |
| GB United Kingdom | #302 | ≈43,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.5K | 2.4K | Fred | 249 |
| DE Germany | #364 | ≈43,000 est. | ≈1 in 1.9K | listed | Fred | 198 |
| BO Bolivia | #4 | ≈42,000 est. | ≈1 in 279 | — | Freddy | 64 |
| CA Canada | #169 | ≈40,000 est. | ≈1 in 951 | 6 | Fred | 265 |
| NI Nicaragua | #55 | ≈13,000 est. | ≈1 in 463 | — | Freddy | 39 |
| CR Costa Rica | #58 | 7,036as Freddy | 1 in 725 | 7K | Freddy | 79 |
129,142 people counted by Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex, 2020. Exact figures are national registers' own counts, while figures marked ≈ and est. are Mondonomo’s estimates, counted from our sources and calibrated against those registers; hover one for how far to trust it in that country. A dash means neither exists.
Registers cited: Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; ONS — Baby names England and Wales (2024); Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender; INEC — civil registry names; TSE — electoral roll (padrón) names. Figures without a register are Mondonomo estimates; see Methodology.
Country figures for a list of names, at full precision, are available under licence rather than by scraping this table (how that works).
Other recorded senses(measured from records)
Fred is also recorded in 5 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In French, Short form of Frédéric or Fred; Germanic 'peace ruler'.
as a nameDictionnaire généalogique des prénoms
Short form of Frederick or, occasionally, of pAlfred. Pet forms: Freddie, Freddy.
as a nameA concise dictionary of first names
In English, A short version of Frederick, Alfred, or Wilfred, also used as a formal male given name.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In Swedish, Fred är ursprungligen en engelsk smekform till → Fredrik. Namnet Fred har också associerats med ordet fred. En känd namnbärare var den amerikanske sångaren och skådespelaren Fred (egentligen Frederick) Astaire (1899–1987). I den finlandssvenska almanackan 18 juli.
as a nameFörnamn i Sverige. Kortfattat namnlexikon
English: short form of FREDERICK or, occasionally, of ALFRED . It has also been used as an independent given name (cf. BERT ). Pet forms: Freddie, Freddy .
as a word
Ordered by how much of this spelling's record each language holds, so a sense from a language the name is barely used in sits last rather than first.
Notable people with this name(measured from records)
- Fred Zinnemannb. 1907ATAustrian film director (1907-1997)
- Fred Grahamb. 1908USAmerican actor (1908-1979)
- Fred Hoyleb. 1915GBBritish astronomer (1915–2001)
- Fred Rogersb. 1928USAmerican television personality (1928–2003)
- Richard Heckb. 1931USnot in their usual nameAmerican chemist (1931–2015)
- Fred Williamsonb. 1938USAmerican football player and actor
- Fred Hamptonb. 1948USAfrican-American activist (1948-1969)
- Fred Armisenb. 1966USAmerican comedian, actor and musician
- Fred Durstb. 1970USAmerican singer, rapper, actor and director (born 1970)
- Michael Phelpsb. 1985USnot in their usual nameAmerican swimmer (born 1985)
The ten people covered by the most Wikipedia language editions — a proxy for cross-cultural notability, which favours historical and Western figures over equally prominent contemporary ones — shown by birth year. Source: Wikidata (CC0).
How to address them(machine-generated)
A formal English salutation is built on the surname, so it needs a full name — on its own, a first name only supports the informal form.
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 111 sources across 62 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 129K | #437 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 346 | #437 |
| CR Costa Rica | TSE — electoral roll (padrón) names | — | 147 | #1,710 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 80 | — |
| CA Canada | Statistics Canada — First names at birth by sex at birth (Table 17-10-0147-01) | 2024 | 11 | — |
| CA Canada | Alberta Open Government — Frequency and Ranking of Baby Names by Year and Gender | 2024 | 1 | #2,319 |
Reference works 6
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Nişanyan Adlar (Turkish given-name national-registry frequency)
- Wikipedia given-name tokens
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
- Rymut, Słownik nazwisk współcześnie w Polsce używanych (10 vols, IJP PAN, Kraków 1992–1994) — every Polish surname in the PESEL register at the end of 1990, with bearer counts nationally and per voivodeship1990
These works list the name; their figures are licensed and are not reproduced here.
Register rows as of the 2026-10-09 data build.
Frequently asked questions
- What are other forms of the name Fred?
- In the etymology graph, Alfredo, Alfred and Federico are forms of the same name in other languages; it is recorded as a short form of Frederick and Fredrick.
- What does the name Fred mean, and where does it come from?
- Short form of Frédéric, from Germanic frid + ric, 'peace' + 'power'. Recorded by Dictionnaire généalogique des prénoms.
- Is Fred a male or female name?
- Fred is a male name in our records. Opposite-gender entries fall within the cross-gender noise we measure in the source data, so we don't report them as usage.
- How do you pronounce Fred?
- A machine transcription gives /fɹɛd/ (IPA) for English.
- In which country does Fred have the most bearers?
- In the United States, the national register counted about 129 thousand people named Fred, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled fred.
- How common is the name Fred?
- In the United States, the national register counted 129,142 people named Fred in 2020, about 1 in 2.6 thousand residents.
- How common is Fred compared with other names?
- In the United States, Fred is the 194th most common given name of 2,815,431 given names recorded there.
What do you want to know about Fred?
Nobody replies to these one by one, but what readers ask decides what these pages answer next.
Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/fredThe payload this page is built from: spellings and scripts, countries and languages, related names, and the registers that attest the form. It takes a free API key (1,000 requests a day), which returns what this page shows everyone; the full country table, every register citation and the year-by-year series come with a licensed key, as does bulk access.
About this data
measured from records inferred from the name graph machine-generated
These figures come from the data snapshot of and will change as it is rebuilt.
Statistics are aggregated from the Mondonomo name corpus; related names and etymology are inferred from the name graph; pronunciation and any machine-marked transliterations are model-generated. Read how the numbers are made, including their known failure modes, and where the data comes from.
Reference works we consult — surname dictionaries, official name registers, Wikidata and Wiktionary — are named directly, beside the claims they support. The per-country source counts also include datasets of person records: we publish how many there are and their authority tier, but not their names.
Cite this page Mondonomo, “Fred” — the 194th most common given name in United States. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.