Faith

The earlier Latin saint’s name Fides, sometimes anglicized as Faith, belonged to a legendary child martyr of the 2nd century, traditionally said to have died at Agen in Roman Gaul under the emperor Diocletian.

Her relics were moved to the monastery of Conques in the 9th century, where a reliquary statue in gold and jewels still survives as 1 of the great treasures of medieval European art.

Saint Faith gave her name to numerous English parish churches, including the crypt chapel of Saint Faith beneath Saint Paul’s Cathedral in London.

As a personal name in the modern sense, Faith emerged with the English Puritans of the 16th and 17th centuries, alongside its sisters Hope and Charity, the 3 theological virtues named in Saint Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians, chapter 13.

The Mayflower passengers brought the name to New England in 1620, and it appeared consistently in colonial American records thereafter. It remained a quiet but persistent choice through the 19th and early 20th centuries.

According to U.S. Social Security Administration records, Faith reentered the top 1000 in the 1970s after a mid-century lull and climbed strongly from the 1990s onward, reaching the top 75 by the early 2000s.

The name’s appeal has been especially strong in the American South and among Christian families, though its usage extends well beyond explicitly religious contexts.

Notable contemporary bearers include country singer Faith Hill, born in 1967, and the English singer-songwriter Paloma Faith, born in 1981, who carries the name as a surname.