Name profile

Robin

unisex

91First-name usabilityHighly workable
Evidence coverageHigh

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Robin originated as a medieval English/French diminutive of Robert, combining Old Frankish hrod ("fame") and berht ("bright") with the Old French diminutive suffix -in, literally "little fame-bright" — i.e., "Robert, but smaller/familiar." Originally masculine, it is now regarded as an independent name in its own right rather than only a nickname, and (particularly in the US) is used for both genders.

Why it works

  • English speakers will almost certainly pronounce it correctly on the first try
  • spelling is short and predictable — rarely needs repeating

Popularity

Uncommon — #704 in the latest U.S. ranking.

Meaning and origin

Robin means "Fame-bright" — a medieval English/French diminutive of Robert, combining Old Frankish hrod ("fame") and berht ("bright") with the Old French diminutive suffix -in.

Robin is genuinely unisex but skews differently by country: in England, 88% of babies named Robin in 2014 were boys, so it remains predominantly male usage in much of Europe. In the United States, by contrast, Robin trended distinctly feminine at its mid-1950s peak. This project's own SSA 2025 data places Robin on both the boys' list (#705) and the girls' list (#704) — one of the very few names in this research wave to appear on both lists in the same year, at almost identical rank positions.

Documented origin: Robin originated as a medieval English/French diminutive of Robert, combining Old Frankish hrod ("fame") and berht ("bright") with the Old French diminutive suffix -in, literally "little fame-bright" — i.e., "Robert, but smaller/familiar." Originally masculine, it is now regarded as an independent name in its own right rather than only a nickname, and (particularly in the US) is used for both genders.

VerifiedDirectly documented by an independent source, with no competing account on file.

How it travels

English and Turkish are shown by default; German is included when it adds a meaningfully different reading.

EnglishROB-inresearched pronunciation
TurkishNo strong structural signal of Turkish/English divergence for this spelling.deterministic phonetic analysis
GermanNo strong structural signal of German/English divergence for this spelling.deterministic phonetic analysis

Spelling stability: highbased on letter-pattern analysis, not a documented linguistic fact.

Also documented

American English: ˈɹɑb.ɪn

British English: ˈɹɒb.ɪn

French: ʁɔ.bɛ̃

Popularity without panic

Uncommon#704 in the latest U.S. ranking.

Still uncommon, but no longer unfamiliar.

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Real-world considerations

  • Spelling note: Robyn.
Explore alternatives
Robert

Documented as a related name or variant form.

Robyn

Documented as a related name or variant form.