Franklin
loc · Latin script
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
Franklin is a name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in China than in any other country. Recorded meaning: ‘franklin’: a medieval landowner of free but not noble birth, ranking below the gentry.
- USUnited States1 in 4.3K(measured from records)
- ECEcuador1 in 344
- CWCuraçao1 in 392
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.
- China (inferred from the name graph)
- 2 (measured from records)
- Sources
- 558 (measured from records)
- 1 in 344 (inferred from the name graph)
≈370,000 people, est.
recorded for this name
Highest-authority source
Ecuador
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Spellings & scripts(measured from records)
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)
‘franklin’: a medieval landowner of free but not noble birth, ranking below the gentry
Sources 1
- Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history]
Attested in 1 language in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Franklin 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 | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| CN China | ≈370,000 est. | ≈1 in 3.7K | — | Franklin | 42 |
| US United States | 78,051 | 1 in 4.3K | 121K | Franklin | 558 |
| EC Ecuador | 49,190 | 1 in 344 | 49K | — | 53 |
| PK Pakistan | ≈43,000 est. | ≈1 in 5.4K | — | Franklin | 17 |
| BR Brazil | 16,334 | 1 in 13K | 16K | — | 6 |
| CR Costa Rica | 4,792 | 1 in 1.1K | 4.8K | — | 2 |
| CW Curaçao | 386 | 1 in 392 | 386 | — | 4 |
| KY Cayman Islands | ≈23 est. | ≈1 in 2.6K | — | Franklin | 12 |
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; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; INEC — civil registry names; IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror); TSE — electoral roll (padrón) names; CBS Curaçao — Most common first names by gender (2023). 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)
Franklin 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, English name from Old French franc, 'free man'; also used as a given name.
as a nameDictionnaire généalogique des prénoms
In English, A surname transferred from the nickname.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In English, Member of the Franks; also from French.
as a nameBaby names, 25,350 baby names nicknames for your family, friends pets, including the top 100 names, 2,000 most popular…
In Irish, (Middle-English frankeleyn , freeholder). This name has been established in Cos. Limerick and Tipperary since late seventeenth century
as a nameThe Surnames of Ireland
In enm, A Middle English name for an English freeman that owns land but is not of noble birth.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
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)
- Benjamin Franklinb. 1706USAmerican polymath and statesman (1706–1790)
- Franklin Pierceb. 1804USpresident of the United States from 1853 to 1857
- Franklin D. Rooseveltb. 1882USpresident of the United States from 1933 to 1945 (1882–1945)
- Billy Grahamb. 1918USnot in their usual nameAmerican Baptist evangelist (1918–2018)
- Rosalind Franklinb. 1920GBBritish chemist, biophysicist, and X-ray crystallographer (1920–1958)
- Edward Albeeb. 1928USnot in their usual nameAmerican playwright (1928–2016)
- Richard Pryorb. 1940USnot in their usual nameAmerican comedian and actor (1940–2005)
- Aretha Franklinb. 1942USAmerican singer, songwriter, and pianist (1942–2018)
- Missy Franklinb. 1995USAmerican swimmer, Olympic gold medalist, world champion, world record-holder
- Frankie Jonasb. 2000USnot in their usual nameAmerican actor
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).
Evidence(measured from records)
Attested in 112 sources across 56 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010 | 2010 | 121K | #251 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2020 | 2020 | 115K | #264 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2000 | 2000 | 115K | #236 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 78K | #679 |
| EC Ecuador | INEC — civil registry names | 2024 | 49K | #40 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — names by decade (Kaggle mirror) | 2022 | 16K | — |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Censo 2022 Nomes no Brasil per-token lookup (v3 API, given+surname) | — | 16K | #1,214 |
| BR Brazil | IBGE — Nomes (census name API) | — | 16K | #1,586 |
| CR Costa Rica | TSE — electoral roll (padrón) names | — | 4.8K | #155 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2025 | 909 | — |
| CW Curaçao | CBS Curaçao — Most common first names by gender (2023) | 2023 | 386 | — |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 253 | #679 |
Reference works 7
- The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- 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
- jeantosti.com — Dictionnaire des noms de famille de France et d'ailleurs (Jean Tosti)
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 does the name Franklin mean, and where does it come from?
- ‘franklin’: a medieval landowner of free but not noble birth, ranking below the gentry Recorded by Encyclopedia of surnames [the complete companion to tracing your names history].
- In which country does Franklin have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 374 thousand people named Franklin in China, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled franklin.
- Where is Franklin most common?
- Measured as a share of residents rather than as a count, Franklin is densest in Ecuador — about 1 in 344 people — even though China holds more of our records for it.
- How common is the name Franklin?
- In the United States, the national register counted 78,051 people named Franklin in 2020, about 1 in 4.3 thousand residents.
What do you want to know about Franklin?
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/franklinThe same 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), and bulk access is licensed separately.
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, “Franklin”. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.