The most used girls' names beginning with F in 2025

F is the letter that does most with least. Only 147 different F names were given to girls in England and Wales in 2025, fewer than any letter except Q, X, U, W and Y, yet those names went to 8,225 babies because two of them, Florence and Freya, sit fifth and sixth in the whole country. Between them they account for 3,726 registrations, or 45 per cent of the letter.

ONS rank (all girls' names)	Name	Babies in 2025	Meaning and origin
5	Florence	1,924	Latin florens, blossoming; the city and the given name share the root
6	Freya	1,802	Old Norse Freyja, lady, the Norse goddess
79	Fatima	598	Arabic, traditionally read as one who abstains or weans; the daughter of the Prophet Muhammad
100	Frankie	462	English diminutive of Frances or Francis, Latin Franciscus, Frenchman
107	Francesca	434	Italian feminine of Franciscus, Frenchman
152	Felicity	330	Latin felicitas, good fortune
241	Flora	193	Latin flos, flower, and the Roman goddess of flowering plants
256	Fiadh	182	Irish fiadh, wild, and fia, deer; the modern name draws on both
281	Faith	162	English virtue name, from Latin fides
301	Fern	149	English plant name, Old English fearn
329	Fatimah	131	A spelling of Fatima, the daughter of the Prophet Muhammad
333	Faye	130	Middle English fay, a fairy, from Old French

The most used boys' names beginning with F in 2025

The boys' side is the same shape: 150 names, 11,220 babies, and Freddie and Finley at tenth and eighteenth carrying 4,259 of them. Six F names sit inside the boys' top 100, which is a high number for a letter this narrow. Almost all of them come from one of two roots, the Germanic frid group behind Freddie, Frederick and Frank, and the Gaelic fionn group behind Finley, Finn and Finlay.

ONS rank (all boys' names)	Name	Babies in 2025	Meaning and origin
10	Freddie	2,526	English diminutive of Frederick, Germanic frid peace and ric ruler
18	Finley	1,733	Anglicised Scottish Gaelic Fionnlagh, fair warrior
52	Frederick	954	Germanic frid peace and ric ruler
56	Frankie	887	English diminutive of Frances or Francis, Latin Franciscus, Frenchman
59	Felix	811	Latin felix, lucky or fruitful
74	Finn	706	Irish Fionn, fair or white, the hero Fionn mac Cumhaill
175	Finlay	293	Anglicised Scottish Gaelic Fionnlagh, fair warrior
186	Frank	272	A Germanic tribal name, later Latin francus, free
193	Francis	262	Latin Franciscus, Frenchman
227	Flynn	218	Anglicised Irish surname O Floinn, descendant of the red-haired one
287	Franklin	158	Middle English frankeleyn, a landowner who was not of noble birth
308	Fraser	147	Scottish surname of uncertain origin; the strawberry-flower reading is a later heraldic invention

Which F names are rising and which are falling

Climbing

Every F name in the boys' top 100 rose in 2025. Finn gained 9 places, Frederick and Felix 3 each, Freddie 3, Frankie 2 and Finley held level. On the girls' side Florence and Freya each gained a place, Frankie gained one and entered the top 100 as a new entry, and Fatima, though down 3 in the year, is up 39 places since 2015. Finn is up 52 places over ten years and Felix 36.

Slipping

There is almost nothing to report, which is itself the finding. Fatima is the only F name with published movement that fell in 2025, by 3 places. No F name in either top 100 is down over ten years. No other letter puts more than three names in the published lists with every one of them standing higher than it did in 2015; F does it with ten.

What the published change columns cannot tell you

Below rank 100 the letter goes quiet in the records. Francesca, Felicity, Flora, Fiadh, Faith, Fern, Finlay, Frank, Francis and Flynn all have exact counts in the ONS full list and no published change. Fiadh at 182 is worth a note: it is the leading girls' name in Northern Ireland in the separate NISRA series, and its modest England and Wales count shows how differently the two jurisdictions name.

How big a letter F really is

By babies named, F is twelfth for girls and tenth for boys, but by number of distinct names it is nineteenth and eighteenth. That gap is the letter's defining feature. Where A spreads 41,473 girls across 1,235 names, F spreads 8,225 across 147. If you choose an F name you are much more likely than average to choose one other people have chosen too.

The concentration is visible in the tail as well. Below Fern at 149 the girls' letter drops away almost immediately, and the boys' letter below Flynn at 218 is mostly spelling variants of names already in the list. There is no large reservoir of rare F names in England and Wales in the way there is for A, K or R.

Further F names in the published 2025 list

The ONS full list does not stop at the tables above, and the counts stay exact all the way down. For girls the next names in order of use are Frances at 112, Freyja at 111, Ffion at 98, Fleur at 77, Fajar at 52, Florrie at 52, Fearne at 51, Farah at 47, Ferne at 42, Fia at 40, Freja at 38, Frida at 38. For boys they are Freddy at 135, Filip at 124, Faris at 109, Fletcher at 104, Fergus at 103, Forrest at 82, Finnley at 79, Fabian at 71, Fred at 65, Fionn at 55, Fateh at 50, Fahad at 46. Each figure is the exact number of babies registered with that exact spelling during 2025, taken from the ONS full-list table rather than from the top 100. The letter carries 147 different girls' names and 150 different boys' names in the published data altogether, and any name given to two or fewer babies has been removed from it.

Choosing a F name: what the data changes

F rewards a decision about frequency rather than about style, because the letter's styles are few. Florence, Freya, Freddie and Finley are all firmly mainstream and all rising, so a child will meet others. Felicity at 330, Flora at 193 and Francis at 262 are the genuinely uncommon end, and they are uncommon by a wide margin rather than a narrow one.

Baby names starting with F: girls and boys