Girl Names Starting With P

Ranks are overall positions among all 2025 girl names, so gaps between rows are real. For a random shortlist, spin P girl names in the generator, or scan the full top 100 girl names.

How common is P as a first letter for girls in 2025?

Across the 2025 top 1,000 girl names, the 22 that start with P hold 2.3% of the list's births between them, placing P 16th of the 26 initials. Tier by tier, the 2025 overall top 100 claims 2 of the table's 50 names, the 101–500 band claims 9, the 501–1,000 band claims 11, and 28 rank past #1,000, outside the committed top-1,000 file. The table's last row, Philippa, still carries 61 births at #2,808; any P girl names below it are outside the committed per-letter depth of 50 and are not shown.

Summed, the 50 names in the 2025 P table account for 30,744 births, and the first count, Penelope's 6,225, is 102.0 times the last, Philippa's 61. The middle row, the 25th, is Prisha at #1,238 with 182 births in 2025. The widest jump between consecutive rows is 273 ranks, from Perla (#1,590) to Paityn (#1,863); every 2025 girl name at the ranks between them begins with another letter. 3 rows carry exactly the count of the row above them, ordered by the SSA's alphabetical tie rule; the first such pair is Paityn (#1,863) and Pippa (#1,864), at 107 births each. Inside the 2025 overall top 100, P contributes Penelope (#22) and Paisley (#67) — 2 names in all.

How a rank like #22 is assigned, including the SSA's alphabetical tie-break between equal counts, is explained in Reading ranks and counts.

P girl names across the decade snapshots

Every snapshot year from 1955 to 2015 has at least one P girl name in its top 200; the count was 8 in 1955 and 7 in 2015. The most P names in a single snapshot was 8 in 1955, led by Patricia at #6 with 46,226 births; the fewest was 2 in 1995. The lead changed hands among 3 names across those 7 snapshots (Patricia, Paige and Penelope), and Penelope leads again in 2025, at #22.

Snapshot by snapshot, the share of top-200 girl births going to P names reads 6.6% in 1955, 4.6% in 1965, 1.4% in 1975, 0.7% in 1985, 0.8% in 1995, 1.0% in 2005 and 3.0% in 2015, highest in 1955 and lowest in 1985. Cut to the same top-200 depth, the 2025 list holds 6 P names with 2.5% of its births, led by Penelope at #22. P's 6.6% in 1955 and 3.0% in 2015 are two cells of the girls' table in First-letter trends since 1955, which sets every initial beside the other 25 for each snapshot year; it is one of the site's data guides.

Faded and new P girl names

Between the snapshots and 2025, 5 P girl names dropped out at the committed depths — each inside some snapshot's top 200, none among the 50 names in the 2025 table. Absent means absent from the 2025 top-50 P list, which stops at Philippa (#2,808, 61 births); a faded name may still be registered below that cut.

The 2025 table also carries 38 names that no snapshot top 200 contains: Parker (#106), Phoebe (#157), Palmer (#232), Poppy (#292), Phoenix (#534), Paris (#592), Paislee (#669), Persephone (#735), Pearl (#777), Paulina (#784), Paloma (#793) and Promise (#826), and 26 more. Parker, the best-ranked of the 38 at #106, could still have been given to girls below rank 200 in 1955 or in any later snapshot year, because the decade files record nothing beneath that depth.

The shape of the 2025 P list

On the SSA spelling, 1 of the 50 names in the 2025 P table has four letters or fewer, 35 have five to seven, and 14 have eight or more. Ranked within each class, the 2025 P table has one short spelling, Pia at #1,456, 35 medium spellings from Paisley at #67 to Praise at #2,680, and 14 long spellings from Penelope at #22 to Philippa at #2,808. By letter count, Pia is the shortest spelling in the 2025 table (3 letters, #1,456) and Persephone the longest (10 letters, #735). "a" is the second letter of 17 of the 50 names in the 2025 P table, "r" of 12, and "e" of 9; 7 second letters are used in total.

Across the sexes, 11 of these 50 spellings also sit on the 2025 boys' P list, where the SSA ranks each sex on its own: Parker (#106 for girls, #102 for boys), Peyton (#199 for girls, #684 for boys), Presley (#225 for girls, #1,819 for boys), Palmer (#232 for girls, #995 for boys), Payton (#440 for girls, #1,569 for boys), Phoenix (#534 for girls, #329 for boys), Paris (#592 for girls, #2,326 for boys) and Perry (#2,233 for girls, #1,373 for boys), and 3 more.

P girl names: questions the data answers

What is the most popular girl name starting with P in 2025?

Penelope. The 2025 SSA data records 6,225 girls named Penelope, which places it at #22 among all girl names that year, inside the overall top 100.

How many girl names starting with P are in the 2025 top 1,000?

22. Together they account for 2.3% of the births in the 2025 top 1,000, the 16th-largest share among the 26 initials.

Why does this page list 50 P girl names?

The committed per-letter file holds the 50 most-registered 2025 girl names for each initial, and P fills it: the 50th row is Philippa at #2,808. Any P names below that cut are outside the committed depth and are not shown.

Which P girl name on this page has the lowest rank?

Philippa, at #2,808 with 61 births in 2025. Ranks are overall positions among all 2025 girl names, so the span from #22 to #2,808 covers names that start with other letters.

How many P girl names were in the top 200 in 1955 and in 2015?

8 in 1955 (led by Patricia at #6) and 7 in 2015 (led by Penelope at #34). The 7 snapshots are single SSA years cut at rank 200; between them they hold 33 P entries, and the P count ranges from 2 (1995) to 8 (1955).

Do any of these P girl names also appear on the boys' P list for 2025?

Yes, 11 of the 50: Parker (#106 for girls, #102 for boys), Peyton (#199 for girls, #684 for boys), Presley (#225 for girls, #1,819 for boys), Palmer (#232 for girls, #995 for boys), Payton (#440 for girls, #1,569 for boys), Phoenix (#534 for girls, #329 for boys), Paris (#592 for girls, #2,326 for boys) and Perry (#2,233 for girls, #1,373 for boys), and 3 more. Each shared spelling is ranked once per sex: for Parker that is #106 and 2,536 births on the girls' side against #102 and 3,477 on the boys'.

Other letters

Boy names for this letter: boy names starting with P.

Source: every name, rank, and count on this page comes from the U.S. Social Security Administration's national baby-names dataset (2025 data, from Social Security card applications). It is public-domain U.S. government data; names given fewer than 5 times in a year are excluded by the SSA, spelling variants are counted separately, and the data covers U.S. births only. Full caveats on the methodology page.