Faith has 146,590 cumulative American girls on SSA record and currently sits at rank 249, with a 2003 peak that placed it inside the top 100. The chart shape shows a virtue-name that climbed through the 1990s and early 2000s on the broader Christian-American naming wave, peaked in the early 2000s, and has been in slow descent since while remaining a steady mid-tier pick.
The English virtue-name source
Faith is an English virtue name from the Latin fides ("trust," "loyalty," "faith"), used in Puritan and Reformed Christian naming from the 17th century onward as part of a cluster that included Hope, Charity, Patience, and Prudence. The original Puritan use was theological, naming children after Christian virtues as a kind of family aspiration. Most of the original cluster (Charity, Patience, Prudence) faded after the 18th century, but Faith and Hope have continued in active American use.
The single-syllable structure with the strong final consonant gives Faith a confident, slightly stark register that contrasts with the more melodic two and three-syllable names dominating the modern American girls' chart.
The country-music and Christian-revival cohort
Country singer Faith Hill (born 1967) anchored the name's modern American visibility through her 1990s and 2000s pop-crossover career. The 1998 release of "This Kiss" and the broader country-pop crossover moment coincided with the peak of the SSA chart climb, giving Faith one of the cleaner celebrity-transmission patterns in modern naming.
Faith travels with a cluster of virtue and Christian-themed names that have grown together since 1990: Hope, Grace, Trinity, Charity, and Destiny all share the structure. The cluster has been driven primarily by evangelical and broadly Christian American naming preferences, with strong distribution across Southern and Midwestern states.
The counter-reading
Worth flagging the strong religious register. The bearer's name is a Christian theological virtue, which can read as a clear family identity statement or as an unwelcome assumption depending on the bearer's eventual relationship to Christianity. Parents in interfaith or non-religious households sometimes prefer Faith for the secular sense of "trust" or "loyalty," but the religious reading remains the dominant cultural default in most American contexts.
Sibling pairings lean similarly virtue: Faith and Hope, Faith and Grace, Faith and Serenity. Middle names tend short and grounding: Faith Marie, Faith Ann, Faith Rose. Browse five-letter girl names for the broader cluster.