Francis

given name · Latin script

Meaning, in English: From the personal name Francis, from Old French and ultimately Latin Franciscus, literally “Frenchman”

Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise

/fɹænsɪs/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated

Francis is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Nigeria than in any other country, where it is the 87th most common given name.

rarermore common
  • GHGhana≈1 in 379(inferred from the name graph)
  • NGNigeria≈1 in 530
  • BEBelgium≈1 in 740

carrying the name, as counted by its national register where one exists and as Mondonomo estimates it elsewhere (marked ≈ and "est." on hover). One hue, darker where it is more common; hover a country for its figure.

Nigeria (inferred from the name graph)

≈400,000 people, est.

#511 (measured from records)

of 15M given names

Sources
576 (measured from records)

Highest-authority source

≈1 in 379 (inferred from the name graph)

Ghana, est.

measured from records inferred from the name graph

Name dossier (print, CSV)

Meaning & origin(measured from records)

From the personal name Francis, from Old French and ultimately Latin Franciscus, literally “Frenchman”.

Sources 1

  • Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]

Attested across 12 languages in the etymology graph.

How Francis is read(measured from records)

Francis is one spelling over 3 language communities, and the dictionaries record it differently in 2 of them. Each row is what a source recorded for that language, beside the share of this name’s records the language holds. No single row is the name’s meaning.

  • English65%

    From the personal name Francis, from Old French and ultimately Latin Franciscus, literally “Frenchman”.

    as a nameEncyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]

    From Italian Francesco, ‘Frenchman’; name of St Francis of Assisi.

    as a nameIrish first names

  • French9.2%

    From Latin Franciscus, ‘Frankish; from France’.

    as a nameLe grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)

    Forme internationale de François, du latin Franciscus « franc, libre ».

    as a nameDictionnaire généalogique des prénoms

    Origine latine, « Franc ».

    as a nameLe grand guide des prénoms (Enfant - Education)

  • Spanish7.5%

    No dictionary in our sources glosses Francis in Spanish.

The share is ours — how much of this name’s records each language holds. The sense beside it is the source’s, quoted and credited, including where it names a gender. We do not publish a gender of our own per language: our records carry one figure for the spelling as a whole.

Where in the world(measured from records)

Francis 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.

Where Francis is recorded, by country
CountryMost common spellingSources
NG Nigeria#87≈400,000 est.≈1 in 530—Francis155
US United States#243138,4931 in 2.4K121KFrancis576
PH Philippines#128≈130,000 est.≈1 in 861—Francis191
GH Ghana#7≈78,000 est.≈1 in 379—Francis126
FR France—≈69,000 est.≈1 in 989166K—15
BE Belgium#546≈16,000 est.≈1 in 740792Francis139

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; INSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024); Statbel — Noms de famille (family 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 names spelled this way(inferred from the name graph)

Francis is also recorded as 5 other names, grouped separately because the records behind them do not connect to the one described above.

  • French given name5 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in France, United States, Belgium, Canada

    Also written Françis

  • Spanish given name48 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in United States, Philippines, Venezuela, Peru

    Also written Francís, Fráncis, Françis, Fräncïs, Fráncís

  • a separate name5 spellings in the group

    Also written Frâncis, Françis, Fräncis

  • Hindi given name10 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in India, United States, United Kingdom, Philippines

    Languages: Hindi, Urdu

    Also written Françis, Fräncîs, Fráncis, Frâncis

  • German given name8 spellings in the group

    Most recorded in Germany, United States, Austria, United Kingdom

    Languages: German, English

    Also written Françis, Fraencis, Fräncis, Fráncis, Fräńćïš

127 further groups record this spelling and are not listed here.

Grouping is the name graph's, not a register's: two spellings join a group when the evidence links them, so a group is a claim about the records rather than about the people.

Other recorded senses(measured from records)

Francis is also recorded in one other lexicon, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.

  • In Swedish, Francis och Frances är engelska former av latinets Franciscus (→ Frans). Stavningen Francis är vanligare till män, medan Frances är vanligare till kvinnor.

    as a nameFörnamn i Sverige. Kortfattat namnlexikon

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)

18001850190019502000Richard Francis Burton, b. 1821Francis Galton, b. 1822Francis William Aston, b. 1877Louis Mountbatten, b. 1900Charles Francis Richter, b. 1900Francis Crick, b. 1916Robert F. Kennedy, b. 1925Francis Lai, b. 1932Bill Nighy, b. 1949Francis Fukuyama, b. 1952

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)

InformalHi Francis,

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 160 sources across 80 countries.

Official registers attesting Francis
CountryRegisterYearCountRank
FR FranceINSEE — Fichier des prénoms (1900–2024)2024166K#2,498
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex2020121K#409
US United StatesCensus Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex202017K#409
US United StatesSSA — National Baby Names (1880–present)2025769—

Reference works 9

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

Is Francis a male or female name?
Francis 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.
What does the name Francis mean, and where does it come from?
From the personal name Francis, from Old French and ultimately Latin Franciscus, literally “Frenchman”. Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
What are other forms of the name Francis?
In the etymology graph, Ciccio is a form of the same name in other languages.
In which country does Francis have the most bearers?
Mondonomo estimates about 404 thousand people named Francis in Nigeria, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled francis.
How do you pronounce Francis?
A machine transcription gives /fɹænsɪs/ (IPA) for English.
How common is the name Francis?
In the United States, the national register counted 138,493 people named Francis in 2020, about 1 in 2.4 thousand residents.
How common is Francis compared with other names?
In Nigeria, Francis is the 87th most common given name of 138,191 given names recorded there.

What do you want to know about Francis?

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Query this name via API
curl -H "X-API-Key: YOUR_KEY" https://api.mondonomo.ai/api/v1/name-graph/francis

The 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, “Francis” — the 87th most common given name in Nigeria. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.

See how Francis parses inside a full name →