Grace · Daily fortune

Grace is a feminine English name taken directly from the word grace, which Behind the Name says "ultimately derives from Latin gratia". It is one of the virtue names associated with the Puritans: Behind the Name says they created it in the 17th century, while Wikipedia records regular Puritan use from the 16th to the 18th centuries and ties it to the Christian idea of divine grace. Both sources describe the same arc of popularity: very common at the end of the 19th century, out of fashion for much of the 20th, and back in force from the 1990s, when the sitcom Will and Grace may have helped an already rising name. In the United States it ranked #38 for girls in 2025.

Behind the Name derives Grace "from the English word grace, which ultimately derives from Latin gratia", and lists gratia as the root. Wikipedia agrees on the Latin source, glosses gratia as "gracious", and explains the name's function as a virtue name referring to the Christian concept of divine grace and the theological virtues. Because Grace is a vocabulary word rather than an inherited personal name, its meaning is transparent to English speakers and has not drifted: the name means what the word means. Behind the Name also lists the equivalent forms that other languages built from the same Latin word, such as Italian Grazia, Spanish Gracia and Portuguese Graça.

Grace belongs to the group of virtue names that English Puritans favoured; Behind the Name dates its creation to the 17th century, Wikipedia to regular Puritan use across the 16th–18th centuries. Wikipedia credits a mid-19th-century revival to Grace Darling (1815–1842), the British woman who rescued nine people from a shipwreck in 1838, after which use among British girls increased in the late 1830s and 1840s; many of those girls later emigrated to America. In the United Kingdom the name declined after 1870, but in the United States it stayed in the top 100 for girls from the 1860s to the late 1930s. Both sources record the mid-century slump (Wikipedia: out of fashion in the 1940s–1980s) and the revival from about 1990. Behind the Name notes that the sitcom Will and Grace (1998–2006) "may have helped, though the name was already strongly rising when it premiered", and that Grace was the top girls' name in England and Wales in 2006. Wikipedia adds that the name has been particularly well used among American women and girls of Chinese, Japanese or Korean descent, chosen for its Christian significance or as an English translation of names with similar meanings. The actress Grace Kelly (1929–1982) is the bearer Behind the Name singles out.

Grace ranked #38 among girls' names in the United States in 2025 (Social Security Administration). The longer record is unusually well documented: Wikipedia places it in the US top 100 from the 1860s to the late 1930s and out of fashion from the 1940s to the 1980s; Behind the Name describes a comeback at the end of the 20th century and a #1 position in England and Wales in 2006. No current England and Wales or other national rankings were fetched for this draft.

Grace is a single syllable in English, /ˈɡɹeɪs/, rhyming with face. Other languages generally use their own word for grace as a name rather than the English form; the entries below are the forms Behind the Name lists under other languages and cultures, plus the French Grâce that Wikipedia mentions. Their pronunciations were not verified in this pass.

Grace is the rare word-name that reads as a classic rather than a novelty, because it has been a given name for four centuries and has a saint-like stillness to it. One syllable makes it a favourite middle name, but as a first name it carries as much weight as the longer Victorian revivals it is usually shortlisted with. It pairs well with a longer surname or a longer middle name, and Gracie softens it for early childhood. Parents who like it but want something rarer tend to look at the other virtue names or at the Latin-derived forms such as Graziella.

Its second life has also changed how it reads. In its Victorian heyday Grace stood beside Edith and Ethel; today it stands beside Ava and Chloe, and the name has lost none of its quietness in the move. The main trade-off is exposure: it has now been in the American top 40 long enough that a class may hold more than one, and the risk of dating is the risk that attends any name that peaks twice.

The bearers below are those named in the Behind the Name entry and the Wikipedia article consulted for this profile; Wikipedia's long list of women named Grace was not mined.

Names that share Grace's virtue-name background, its one-syllable classic feel, or its Latin root.