Fyodor
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Meaning
gift of God (Russian form of Theodore); famously borne by Fyodor Dostoevsky, Russian novelist and author of Crime and Punishment
The story
Fyodor is the Russian form of Theodore, from the Greek for gift of God, a name worn by tsars before it became shorthand for one of literature's giants. Fyodor Dostoevsky wrote Crime and Punishment, The Brothers Karamazov, and Notes from Underground, and lived a life as extreme as his fiction: sentenced to death as a young man, reprieved at the last moment in front of the firing squad, and sent to a Siberian prison camp instead, an experience that burned through everything he wrote afterward. His novels made Fyodor a name readers everywhere recognize on sight. Americans have admired him from a distance without borrowing the name: Fyodor first appears in US records in the 2020s and remains genuinely rare, a deep, unmistakably Russian choice with a built-in reading list.
How popular is Fyodor around the world?
In the United States, 40 babies were named Fyodor between 2020 and 2025.
Fyodor is on the official records of the United States.
United States
1 in 540,000
In the United States, 40 babies were named Fyodor between 2020 and 2025.
Shape drawn from US Social Security baby-name records. Fyodor has stayed rare in US records the whole time: no peak decade to name.
Births with a Social Security record. Source: U.S. Social Security Administration
England and Wales
last on record 2022
Fyodor is not on the 2025 record for England and Wales, where spellings under 3 in a year are withheld at source.
The count never rose above 3 in a year, too few to chart.
Birth registrations in England and Wales (not the whole UK); exact spellings are counted separately, and any spelling under 3 in a year is withheld at source. Source: Office for National Statistics, baby names in England and Wales
Not on the record in Spain, Mexico City, Argentina, Puerto Rico, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, Scotland and Poland: those registries withhold small counts, so rare uses may sit below their floors.
Not on the Chile record: nametree keeps spellings that reached 5 registrations in some year, so rarer uses are not shown. Not on the Montevideo record for 1940 to 2011: that registry withholds nothing, so this spelling was not given there in those years. Not on the France record: nametree keeps spellings that reached 20 births in some year, so rarer uses are not shown. Not on the South Australia record for 1944 to 2017: that registry withholds nothing, so this spelling was not given there in those years. Not on the Austria record for 1984 to 2025: Statistik Austria publishes every first name down to a single birth, so this name was not given there in those years (before 2010 the record covers babies with Austrian citizenship only). Not on Norway’s list: Statistics Norway lists only first names carried by 200 or more living people, so rarer names are not shown.
Keep exploring
The Fyodor deep dive
Whether you’re naming a baby or exploring your own name’s history, this is a personal letter, not a list: where Fyodor truly comes from, how it traveled, and what a century of records reveals. If you have grown a tree on nametree, it also considers how Fyodor fits with your family’s names and surname.
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