Patience

PAY-shuns
Latin virtue name
"ability to accept or tolerate inconveniences, and suffering without anxiety or anger"

Patience Origin and Meaning

The name Patience is a girl's name of Latin origin meaning "ability to accept or tolerate inconveniences, and suffering without anxiety or anger".

Patience is a passive virtue turned engaging name, fresher than Hope, Faith, or even Charity. Its resemblance to the trendy Payton may be one reason that it returned to the US charts back in the 90's and 2000s, having been absent for a century.

Common in the seventeenth century, Patience is the eponymous heroine of a Gilbert & Sullivan comic operetta. In literature, Patience appears in Shakespeare's Henry VIII and in Anthony Trollope's novel, The Eustace Diamonds

In the 2004 film Catwoman, the non-superhero name of the protagonist, played by Halle Berry, is Patience Phillips--which may have caused the name's bump in popularity two years later. It remained in the charts until 2014, however, it has now declined.

Its disappearance might be down to parents finding Patience a little too much like Prudence, Chastity, or Temperance: names that could feel heavy to wear or live up to. Alternatively, it could have just been pushed out by a new wave of virtue options, such as True, Chosen, Felicity, and Sage.

Still, Patience would be an unexpected choice, and nickname Penny would be pretty sweet!

# 988 in the US

Patience Rank in US Top 1000

Patience Popularity

Famous People Named Patience

  • Patience Jane Wheatcroft
    Baroness Wheatcroft, English journalist and politician
  • Patience Ann McIntyre
    American singer of duo Prudence & Patience, with sister Prudence Ann McIntyre
  • Patience Marie Josephine Kama Dabany
    singer and former First Lady of Gabon
  • Patience Cooper
    Indian silent film actress
  • Patience Kemper
    American child actress
  • Patience Hodgson
    lead singer of Australian band The Grates

Patience in Pop Culture

  • "Patience
    " song by Take That
  • "Patience
    " novel by Daniel Clowes
  • Patience Buckner
    character in the movie "Cabin in the Woods"
  • Patience
    character on TV's "Firefly"
  • Remember Patience "Mem" Whipple
    character in the Dear America book series
  • Patience Muffet
    English girl who may have inspired the nursery rhyme Little Miss Muffet
  • Patience Phillips
    character in movie "Catwoman"
  • "Patience
    " song by Guns N Roses
  • "Patience; or
    Bunthorne's Bride," opera by Gilbert & Sullivan
  • Patience "Patsy" Mount
    character on TV's "Call the Midwife"
  • Patience Merlyn
    character from Daphne du Maurier's "Jamaica Inn"
  • Patience Turner
    character in Supernatural and it's spin,off; Wayward Sisters