Is National Fred Day the same as National Freddie Day?

No, they are separate days. National Freddie Day falls on 18 July, about three weeks later.

Is it connected to Fred Korematsu Day?

No. Fred Korematsu Day is a civil liberties observance on 30 January honoring the wartime plaintiff Fred Korematsu, and it is recognized by proclamation in California.

Who created National Fred Day?

The day is kept by the people who observe it, and British publications including the Liverpool Echo and OK! Magazine UK have marked it on 29 June. No founder, organization or establishing record for it could be traced.

What does the name Fred mean?

Behind the Name records Fred as a short form of Frederick and of other names built on the same element.

National Fred Day

Next celebratedTuesday, June 29, 2027

Fred stopped pointing at a person during the First World War, when British soldiers sang about Fred Karno's army and the phrase became slang for an incompetent outfit. June 29 gives the name back.

See how to celebrate

Countdown to the day

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Last updated September 7, 2026 · by the Holiday Calendar TeamHave an update or spot an error?

YEARLY DATEJune 29

OBSERVED INInternationally

CATEGORYNames

ORIGIN

Community Origin

FOUNDING ENTITY

Not documented

FIRST OBSERVED

Not documented

HOW THE HOLIDAY CAME TO BE

Everybody kept it; nobody filed it.

No founder, founding organization, or establishment record for National Fred Day has been identified. What the record shows is observance rather than creation, with British media brands marking the day on its June 29 date in consecutive years.

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INTRO

The British computer that kept a page of memory called Fred

The BBC Microcomputer has a page of memory called Fred. Not a variable some programmer picked, but a fixed part of the machine's address space, named in the manual. National Fred Day belongs to the people who carry that name, though the name has done plenty of work without them.

The machine's technical reference states it without ceremony. Three pages of memory were handed special names, and page &FC, the one wired to whatever hardware you plugged into the back, is called FRED. The other two are JIM and SHEILA.

ORIGINS

Fred Day history

INTRODUCTION

Fred earned a second life as a common noun well ahead of any holiday. British soldiers in the First World War sang that they were Fred Karno's Army, the ragtime infantry, and the line outlived the war.

The phrase hardened into an idiom. Green's Dictionary of Slang records Fred Karno's army as a noun for a group of people considered incompetent, borrowed from the music-hall impresario Fred Karno. The name had stopped pointing at a person and started pointing at a condition.

CHAPTER 01

A machine full of borrowed first names

Acorn's BBC Microcomputer went on sale in December 1981, built for the BBC Computer Literacy Project. It reached the large majority of British schools.

The names on those memory pages travelled with it. The Jargon File, the long-running lexicon of programmer slang, traces the British habit of writing fred, jim and sheila in example code straight back to them.

So a generation of programmers met the name in a setting that had nothing to do with anybody called Fred.

CHAPTER 02

The day itself leaves no trail

Nothing comparable survives for the day itself. Searches for an originating person, an organizing body, a proclamation and a registration all came back empty.

What survives instead is the keeping of it, which for a name day is not a small thing. The name has left a far longer paper trail than the holiday built on top of it.

TIMELINE

Timeline

Fred Karno's army enters the slang

Green's Dictionary of Slang dates the soldiers' song to the war, giving the phrase its earliest citation.

Fred Basset reaches the Daily Mail

Alex Graham's basset hound strip began running in the paper that July and is still going.

The BBC Micro goes on sale

Acorn's machine launched that December for the BBC Computer Literacy Project and spread through British schools.

A federal database is named FRED

The Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis launched its economic data service as a free dial-up bulletin board.

Fred leaves the US top 1000

It ranked 875th that year, closing an unbroken run that had started in 1880.

BY THE NUMBERS

National Fred Day by the Numbers

14th: Peak US rank, in 1885
80: US boys named Fred in 2025
65: Boys named Fred in England and Wales, 2025
1.5M+: BBC Micros sold

GOOD TO KNOW

Surprising facts about National Fred Day

A newspaper bought a cartoonist a dog

Readers wrote in asking what Alex Graham's creature was meant to be, so the Daily Mail bought him a basset hound. His daughter told the BBC the dog was a girl called Freda, which makes the cartoon Fred a portrait of a female.

The Fed's Fred started with 620 users

When the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis launched FRED, subscribers were capped at one hour a day and 30 data series, downloaded at up to 14.4 kilobits per second.

Philip Larkin borrowed it for a library

Green's Dictionary of Slang cites a 1955 letter in which Philip Larkin reached for the phrase, writing of a Fred Karno's library. By then it had travelled a long way from the trenches.

Its famous bearers are a dancer and a caveman

Behind the Name gives the actor and dancer Fred Astaire, who lived from 1899 to 1987, and the cartoon caveman Fred Flintstone as the name's famous bearers.

WHY THIS DAY MATTERS

Why We Love National Fred Day

LANGUAGE

The name you use when the name is not the point.

FOLDOC, the computing dictionary, calls fred the personal name most frequently used as a metasyntactic variable, the stand-in a programmer types in an example. It also notes that fred carries no positive or negative loading, which is exactly what the job requires.

RECORD

Named publications keep marking it

The Liverpool Echo told its readers it was National Fred Day on 29 June 2024, and OK! Magazine UK did the same on the same date the following year. For a day with no founder on file, that recurrence is the evidence.

STATUS

Nothing official sits behind it

A full-text search of the Federal Register returns no document containing the phrase National Fred Day. Whatever this day is, nobody legislated it into being.

GET INVOLVED

How to Celebrate National Fred Day

Ask your Fred which Fred he was named after

A Fred is very often a Frederick on the birth certificate, and the choice usually came from somewhere. The answer is generally a grandfather, and generally a story.

LOOK

Look the name up in a national register

The Office for National Statistics publishes the full ranked list of boys' names registered in England and Wales each year. You can find Fred in the published dataset and watch it move.

TYPE

Type fred into your next piece of example code

It is the British programmer's default placeholder, and using it is a small act of continuity. Pair it with jim and sheila if you want the full set.

READ

Read a week of Fred Basset

The strip has run in the Daily Mail since 1963 and is still drawn today. A week of it is roughly seven small jokes and one very patient dog.

SEND

Send the greeting to every Fred you know

The day carries no ceremony, no meal and no ritual of its own. The message is the entire observance, so send it.

Test your knowledge

How well do you know National Fred Day?

1 / 6

On the BBC Microcomputer, what was the memory page called FRED used for?

Answer

No. It is an unofficial observance with no legal standing found, so it is a normal working day.

COLOPHON

Sources

How we know what’s on this page. References, not endorsements.

15sources

9primary records

7independently dated

Primary records

The Cambridge Microcomputer Centre

The Advanced User Guide for the BBC Microcomputer

The BBC Micro's technical reference, naming the memory pages FRED, JIM and SHEILA.