Name Awesome

Pansy

Girls' name

Pansy flower

Pansy has been given to 10,953 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 1916, with 273 recorded.

Babies named Pansy, 2018

1 in 586,000

Pansy 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 Gaps mean the name was given fewer than 5 times that year; these counts are unpublished.

Pansy: meaning, origin, and history

Pansy flower

Deeper origin not confirmed in the cited records

What Pansy means

Pansy takes the English flower pansy into personal-name use.

The older word means “type of flower”.

Origin, language, and formation

Pansy is used in English.

American usage and historical context

In the United States, 10,953 girls were recorded with the name Pansy between 1880 and 2018. Its highest annual count was 273 in 1916; its best national rank was #289 in 1887.

Sources & methodologyReferences, data & attribution

Meaning, origin, and language notes draw on the references below.

American popularity figures use published Social Security Administration records for this exact spelling. Counts below five for a name, sex, and year are omitted.

Wiktionary material is available under CC BY-SA 4.0.

How common is Pansy?

Pansy had fewer than 5 recorded uses in 2025, so these figures use 2018, the last year it was published.

Among all babies, 2018
1 in 586,000
6 of 3,516,853 births
Among girls only
1 in 283,000
<0.01% of girls
Rank, 2018
Unranked
Fewer than 5 uses
Coin-flip room size
406,284 kids
Even odds of a second one

Where Pansy 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 2018 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 406,284 children born in 2018 and it's an even bet that one of them is another Pansy. In a class of 30 the chance is Under 1%.

When Pansys were born

Half of everyone ever recorded as Pansy was born before 1925 — so the typical Pansy is around 100 today.

Median birth year
1925
About 100 years old
Biggest decade
1920s
21.6% of all use
Born in the last 25 years
0.20%
Mostly a past generation
Recorded since 1950
1,579
People you could plausibly meet
Choose a decade

1920s — 21.6% of all recorded uses (2,361).

Is Pansy 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 1916 (273)
Years since peak
109
Years
Year-to-year steadiness
Volatile
41.7% average annual change
Best rank ever
#289
1887

Spellings of Pansy

Pansy is not the most common spelling — Nancy is, with 60.5% against Pansy's 0.66%.

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 Pansy is used

Across 1910–2025, Pansy was most concentrated in West Virginia — about 1 in 3,226 girls, against 1 in 20,156 across all states with data. It was least common in New York (1 in —).

031 per 100,000

Most concentrated

  1. 1West Virginia1 in 3,226
  2. 2North Carolina1 in 4,000
  3. 3Missouri1 in 5,882
  4. 4South Carolina1 in 5,882
  5. 5Arkansas1 in 6,250
  6. 6Kentucky1 in 6,250
  7. 7Oklahoma1 in 7,692
  8. 8Tennessee1 in 7,692

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. Pansy has too little recent state data to map, so this covers all years from 1910.

Pansy around the world

Where Pansy 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.

  • England & Wales
    2013–2013
    #5,742
    in 2013
  • South Australia
    1957–1957
    #581
    in 1957

Popularity data from Office for National Statistics and Consumer and Business Services (South Australia). ONS data under Open Government Licence v3.0. CBS SA data under CC BY 4.0.

Notable people named Pansy

People whose public names include Pansy, 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.

Pansy 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
#289
1887
Peak year
1916
273 that year
First recorded
1880
Last recorded
2018
All-time count
10,953
Count in 2025
Under 5

Names similar to Pansy

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

PandoraTansyLinsyPangKensyPanzyPandaPanhiaPanseyPansiePanyaPanagiotaPanteraPankieJensyPandyLynsyPanziePanayiotaPandiMakensyNansyPanthaPansye

Names with a curve like Pansy

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

BerylLeotaDessieLessieMerleAlvaFlorineIdellaGeorgieVerdaOmaCorine

Sibling names for Pansy

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 Pansy

Top names of 1916, Pansy's peak yearThe 1910s in fullOther names that peaked in 1887More old lady namesGirls' names starting with P