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Hortense

Girls' name

Possibly having to do with gardens

Hortense has been given to 6,313 babies in the U.S. since 1880. It was used fewer than 5 times in 2025, so it doesn't appear in the latest year's list — today it's a genuinely uncommon pick. Its peak year was 1919, with 229 recorded.

Babies named Hortense, 1976

1 in 506,000

Hortense over time, 1880–2025

Girls
010020030018801900192019401960198020002020

Based on births in the U.S. Babies given the name each year. Hover the chart — or focus it and use the arrow keys — for any year. Gaps mean the name was given fewer than 5 times that year; these counts are unpublished.

Hortense: meaning, origin, and history

Possibly having to do with gardens

French and Latin

What Hortense means

Hortense may mean “having to do with gardens”, associated with hortēnsis.

Dictionary etymologyReferences, data & attribution

From the French form of the Latin Hortēnsia, feminine form of Hortēnsius (“name of a Roman gens”), probably derived from hortēnsis (“having to do with gardens”) on the basis that the first to bear the name was a gardener.

Excerpt from Wiktionary: Hortense (English) · CC BY-SA 4.0

Wiktionary material is available under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Origin, language, and formation

Hortense is used in English and French. Its origins include French and Latin.

Hortense comes through Latin Hortēnsia.

Related names and everyday forms

Related names include Hortēnsia and Hortēnsius.

Pronunciation and spelling

In English, Hortense is pronounced /ˈhɔː(ɹ)tɛns/.

American usage and historical context

In the United States, 6,313 girls were recorded with the name Hortense between 1880 and 1976. Its highest annual count was 229 in 1919; its best national rank was #378 in 1894.

How common is Hortense?

Hortense had fewer than 5 recorded uses in 2025, so these figures use 1976, the last year it was published.

Among all babies, 1976
1 in 506,000
6 of 3,034,007 births
Among girls only
1 in 244,000
<0.01% of girls
Rank, 1976
Unranked
Fewer than 5 uses
Coin-flip room size
350,503 kids
Even odds of a second one

Where Hortense sits on the popularity scale

Rarest published (5 a year)#1 — Olivia (13,544)

Chance at least one other child shares the name

If the other children were drawn at random from the 1976 national name distribution. Real classrooms cluster by region and community, so treat these as a floor, not a ceiling.

Class of 20Under 1%
Class of 30Under 1%
Grade of 100Under 1%
School of 500Under 1%

Put another way: gather 350,503 children born in 1976 and it's an even bet that one of them is another Hortense. In a class of 30 the chance is Under 1%.

When Hortenses were born

Half of everyone ever recorded as Hortense was born before 1920 — so the typical Hortense is around 105 today.

Median birth year
1920
About 105 years old
Biggest decade
1920s
28.4% of all use
Born in the last 25 years
5.2%
Mostly a past generation
Recorded since 1950
399
People you could plausibly meet
Choose a decade

1920s — 28.4% of all recorded uses (1,794).

Is Hortense rising or falling?

Rank movement and count movement can disagree — the number of distinct names in use keeps growing, so a name holding a steady count still slides down the list. Both are shown.

Rank vs 1 year ago
—
Not ranked then
Rank vs 5 years ago
New entry
Not ranked then
Rank vs 10 years ago
—
Not ranked then
Births vs 10 years ago
—
Not published both years
Share of its own peak
0%
Peak was 1919 (229)
Years since peak
106
Years
Year-to-year steadiness
Shifting
23.6% average annual change
Best rank ever
#378
1894

Spellings of Hortense

Hortense is the most-used spelling, taking 77.9% of the 8,107 babies given a near-identical spelling.

Grouped by closeness of spelling (up to two letter changes), same sex, with a floor on all-time use. It catches Sophia/Sofia and Aiden/Ayden, and misses spellings that sound alike but look different, like Sean and Shawn.

Where Hortense is used

Across 1910–2025, Hortense was most concentrated in Texas — about 1 in 16,667 girls, against 1 in 42,372 across all states with data. It was least common in Wisconsin (1 in —).

06 per 100,000

Most concentrated

  1. 1Texas1 in 16,667
  2. 2Missouri1 in 20,000
  3. 3New York1 in 20,000
  4. 4Virginia1 in 20,000
  5. 5Maryland1 in 25,000
  6. 6Georgia1 in 33,333
  7. 7Alabama1 in 50,000
  8. 8Arizona1 in 50,000

Shading is the share of that state's recorded girls given this name, not the raw count — otherwise the map would just show which states are biggest. Unshaded states have no published records for this period. U.S. birth records suppress state-year counts below 5; state counts therefore don't add up to the national total. Every state links to its full rankings. Hortense has too little recent state data to map, so this covers all years from 1910.

Hortense around the world

Where Hortense ranks in official birth records elsewhere in the world. Rankings only — the number of births isn’t comparable between places, so it isn’t shown.

  • France
    1900–2025
    #113
    in 2025
  • Canada
    2020–2021
    #3,354
    in 2021

Popularity data from Institut national de la statistique et des études économiques and Statistics Canada. INSEE data under Licence Ouverte / Etalab 2.0. StatCan data under Statistics Canada Open Licence.

Notable people named Hortense

People whose public names include Hortense, backed by Wikidata given-name records and ordered by linked Wikimedia pages. The name may be a middle name.

People data from Wikidata (CC0). Fame is measured, not judged — the order reflects how widely each person is documented, not the U.S. birth records popularity this page is otherwise about.

Hortense in other languages

Cross-language forms and variants of Hortense. Linked forms have their own page here.

HortensiaHortenzieHortènsia

Variant forms from Wikidata (CC0). Most are used mainly outside the United States; U.S. birth records statistics cover US usage only.

Hortense by the numbers

The raw record for each sex the name is used for.

As a girl's name

Rank in 2025
Unranked
Trend vs 5 yrs ago
—
Best rank ever
#378
1894
Peak year
1919
229 that year
First recorded
1880
Last recorded
1976
All-time count
6,313
Count in 2025
Under 5

Names similar to Hortense

Matched on shared beginnings and endings, similar length, and comparable popularity.

HortenciaHortensiaHorizonHortenceHoraceKaydenseMonseEssenseHartenseCadenseChanseLynse

Names with a curve like Hortense

Not spelling — timing. These names rose, peaked and faded in the same years as Hortense, so they read as being from the same moment even when they look nothing alike.

LeoneVerdaFloyEstellRubyeEthelynAlbinaAldaMozelleFerneIolaGarnet

Sibling names for Hortense

Names from the same era and popularity tier — the two things that make a sibling set feel deliberate — skipping lookalike spellings and shared initials.

Explore around Hortense

Top names of 1919, Hortense's peak yearThe 1910s in fullOther names that peaked in 1894Girls' names starting with H