Friday
given name · Latin script
Meaning: from Old English frīgedæg ‘Friday’; first attested Chetel Friedai 1086 DB (Norfolk)
Recorded as a male name· opposite-gender records fall within measured source noise
/fɹaɪdeɪ/(machine-generated) pronunciation, model-generated
Friday is a given name written in the Latin script, with more bearers in Nigeria than in any other country, where it is the 70th most common given name.
- NGNigeria≈1 in 524(inferred from the name graph)
- USUnited States1 in 736K
- ZMZambia≈1 in 3.9K
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)
- Sources
- 368 (measured from records)
- ≈1 in 524 (inferred from the name graph)
≈410,000 people, est.
Highest-authority source
Nigeria, est.
measured from records inferred from the name graph
Meaning & origin(measured from records)
from Old English frīgedæg ‘Friday’; first attested Chetel Friedai 1086 DB (Norfolk)
Sources 1
- A Dictionary of English Surnames
Attested across 6 languages in the etymology graph.
Where in the world(measured from records)
Friday 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 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| NG Nigeria | #70 | ≈410,000 est. | ≈1 in 524 | listed | Friday | 118 |
| MW Malawi | — | ≈4,700 est. | ≈1 in 4.5K | 1 | — | 6 |
| ZM Zambia | #502 | ≈4,500 est. | ≈1 in 3.9K | 8 | Friday | 19 |
| UG Uganda | — | ≈3,300 est. | ≈1 in 13K | 1 | — | 14 |
| TZ Tanzania | — | ≈2,700 est. | ≈1 in 22K | — | Friday | 12 |
| US United States | — | 452 | 1 in 736K | 7K | Friday | 368 |
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: the african-names-handbook-1976 register; Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex; Census Bureau — Surname Frequency 2010; ECZ 2021 Councillor Elections — candidate results; Wikidata humans by citizenship — given & family names; Wikidata humans by citizenship — given & 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 recorded senses(measured from records)
Friday is also recorded in 3 other lexicons, as a different name or as an ordinary word. These are senses of the spelling, not of the name above.
In English, The sixth day of the week in many religious traditions, and the fifth day of the week in systems using the ISO 8601 norm; the Muslim Sabbath; it follows Thursday and precedes Saturday.
as a wordkaikki.org Wiktionary extract (IPA + transliterations)
In English, day of the week
as a namePronouncing Dictionary of Proper Names
Fida Kofi Afua/Efua
as a nameA Handbook of African Names
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)
- Anthony F. Ittnerb. 1837USnot in their usual nameAmerican politician (1837-1931)
- Frank Friday Fletcherb. 1855USAmerican admiral (1855–1928)
- Friday Hasslerb. 1935USAmerican NASCAR driver
- Friday Elahorb. 1967NGNigerian footballer
- Friday Ahunanyab. 1971NGNigerian boxer
- Ekpe Udohb. 1987USnot in their usual nameNigerian-American basketball player
- Friday Kastenib. 1988ZWZimbabwean cricketer
- Friday Zicob. 1994SSSouth Sudanese association football player
- Friday Etimb. 2002NGNigerian footballer
- Friday ChamberlainUSAmerican actress
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 37 sources across 24 countries.
| Country | Register | Year | Count | Rank |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 309 | #22,150 |
| US United States | Census Bureau — First Name Frequency 2020 by sex | 2020 | 143 | #22,150 |
| ZM Zambia | ECZ 2021 Councillor Elections — candidate results | 2021 | 8 | #37 |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1974 | 8 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 2022 | 7 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1982 | 5 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1977 | 5 | — |
| US United States | SSA — National Baby Names (1880–present) | 1972 | 5 | — |
| MW Malawi | Wikidata humans by citizenship — given & family names | — | 1 | #185 |
| UG Uganda | Wikidata humans by citizenship — given & family names | — | 1 | #652 |
| NG Nigeria | A Handbook of African Names (Asante, 1976) | — | — | — |
Reference works 3
- Nederlandse FamilienamenBank (Dutch surname bank; ex-Meertens Instituut, now CBG)2007
- Wikipedia surname tokens
- Wikidata name items (native-script + romanized given/family names)
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 Friday mean, and where does it come from?
- from Old English frīgedæg ‘Friday’; first attested Chetel Friedai 1086 DB (Norfolk) Recorded by A Dictionary of English Surnames.
- Is Friday a male or female name?
- Friday 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 common is the name Friday?
- In the United States, the national register counted 452 people named Friday in 2020, about 1 in 736 thousand residents.
- How common is Friday compared with other names?
- In Nigeria, Friday is the 70th most common given name of 138,191 given names recorded there.
- In which country does Friday have the most bearers?
- Mondonomo estimates about 408 thousand people named Friday in Nigeria, more than in any other country we hold, where it is most often spelled friday.
- How do you pronounce Friday?
- A machine transcription gives /fɹaɪdeɪ/ (IPA) for English.
What do you want to know about Friday?
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/fridayThe 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, “Friday” — the 70th most common given name in Nigeria. Data snapshot 2026-10-10.