50 Fun Facts About Baby Names

Which girls' name barely existed until a mermaid took it from a New York street sign in the 1984 film Splash?

Madison was meant as a joke: the mermaid reads it off a Madison Avenue sign and is told it is not a real name, yet by the 2000s it ranked second among US girls' names.

Which girls' name reached No. 1 in the US in 1947, the year a song named for a lawyer's baby daughter charted?

Linda was the one-year-old daughter of songwriter Jack Lawrence's attorney, Lee Eastman, and she grew up to become Linda McCartney, wife of Beatle Paul.

Which girls' name was No. 1 in the US for the 2010s, having also ranked third back in the 1880s?

Emma spent the years between out of fashion, missing the decade top 200 for the 1950s through the 1980s before climbing all the way back to the summit.

Which girls' name took off in Britain thanks to the heroine of J. M. Barrie's 1904 play Peter Pan?

Wendy is said to come from 'fwendy-wendy', the nickname a friend's small daughter, Margaret Henley, gave Barrie because she could not pronounce 'friendy'.

Which girls' name entered the US top 1,000 in 2001 after a rock singer chose it for his daughter?

Nevaeh is 'heaven' in reverse, and it was almost unknown until Sonny Sandoval of the band P.O.D. gave it to his daughter in 2000.

Which boys' name has been America's No. 1 most often in the last 100 years, topping the list 44 times?

Michael took over in 1954 and was beaten only once before 1999, a startling rise for a name that ranked no higher than 35th in any decade before the 1940s.

Which girls' name, first seen in Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, was America's No. 1 for the 1980s and 1990s?

Jessica is Shylock's daughter in the play, and Shakespeare may have adapted the name from the biblical Iscah, spelled Iesca in Bibles of his day.

Which brand name did a French court refuse to allow as a baby girl's first name?

Nutella would expose the girl to mockery, the judge ruled, so he renamed her Ella; another couple's choice of Fraise, French for strawberry, was turned down too.

Which girls' name leapt to second place in the US in 1935 at the height of a curly-haired child star's fame?

Shirley rode Shirley Temple's fame to its peak, having been mainly a surname until Charlotte Brontë gave it to the heroine of an 1849 novel.

Which girls' name was America's most popular in every single decade from the 1880s through the 1950s?

Mary was so dominant that in the 1880s it was given more than twice as often as runner-up Anna, and it was still the runner-up for the 1960s as a whole.

Which girls' name, a Cornish form of Guinevere, was the most popular in the US for the 1970s?

Jennifer was little used outside Cornwall until George Bernard Shaw gave it to a character in a 1906 play, and it went on to hold the US top spot every year from 1970 to 1984.

Which boys' name was No. 1 in the US every year from 1999 to 2012, a run that began years before Twilight?

Jacob had already led the list for six years when the first Twilight novel, with a Jacob of its own, appeared in 2005; back in the 1880s the name ranked 49th.

Which top-ten US girls' name of the 1950s and 1960s later became slang for an entitled complainer?

Karen ranked eighth for the 1950s and fourth for the 1960s, and it had already slipped out of the top 200 before the meme about demanding women spread in the late 2010s.

Which Oscar-winning actress and her rock-star husband named their first child Apple in 2004?

Gwyneth Paltrow and Coldplay singer Chris Martin went biblical two years later, naming their son Moses.

Which country's judge made a girl a ward of court to change her name, Talula Does the Hula From Hawaii?

New Zealand registrars had already blocked Keenan Got Lucy and Yeah Detroit, the judge noted in 2008, yet had let Number 16 Bus Shelter and Midnight Chardonnay through.

Which boys' name topped the US list in 1960, the only break in a rival's reign from 1954 to 1998?

David edged ahead for that single year, then spent the rest of the 1960s in second or third place and finished the decade as its runner-up.

Which girls' name, second in the US for the 1920s, comes from the Greek for 'gift of God'?

Dorothy uses the same two Greek roots as Theodore in reverse order, and it sat in America's top ten from the 1900s, the decade The Wonderful Wizard of Oz came out, through the 1930s.

Which girls' name ended a run stretching back to the 1880s by becoming America's most popular for the 1960s?

Lisa had ranked only 37th for the 1950s, then held the yearly top spot from 1962 to 1969 before sliding to sixth for the 1970s.

Which biblical boys' name was America's most popular for the 2010s, after ranking only 20th in the 2000s?

Noah took the yearly top spot in 2013 and held it for four years, although it had sat outside the top 200 in every decade from the 1890s to the 1980s.

Which nickname beginning with P is a traditional pet form of the girls' name Margaret?

Peggy grew out of Meggy, an older pet form, just as Polly began as a variant of Molly.

Which girls' name led the US list every year from 1996 to 2007, making it the top pick of the 2000s?

Emily had ranked outside the top 100 in every decade from the 1900s to the 1960s, despite sharing a name with poet Dickinson and novelist Brontë.

Which boys' name led every US decade from the 1880s to the 1910s and stayed in the top five until the 1970s?

John lost the 1920s title by barely 12,000 babies out of more than 11 million boys born that decade.

Which name, a man's in Gone with the Wind, was America's most popular girls' name in 1991 and 1992?

Ashley began as an English surname meaning 'ash tree meadow', and in America it was given to more boys than girls until 1964.

Which girls' name, the full first name of Twilight heroine Bella Swan, was No. 1 in the US in 2009 and 2010?

Isabella is a Latinate form of Isabel, itself a version of Elizabeth, and it had never reached the US top 200 for a whole decade until the 1990s.

Which boys' name, missing from every decade's US top 200 before the 2000s, took over as America's No. 1 in 2017?

Liam is an Irish short form of William that has no recorded use before the 17th century and caught on in Ireland itself only around 1900.

Which name did Beyoncé and Jay-Z give their first daughter in 2012 and later try to trademark?

Blue Ivy's cries on her father's song 'Glory', released two days after her birth, made her the youngest person credited on a Billboard chart up to then.

Which island nation has a Naming Committee that must approve any first name not already on its official register?

Iceland's committee left a former mayor of Reykjavík unable to name his daughter Camilla; she became Kamilla, because the letter C is not in the national alphabet.

Which girls' name leapt up the US charts after the 1964 sitcom Bewitched gave it to a suburban witch?

Samantha had fallen out of the top 1,000 before the show began, returned in 1964 and jumped to 179th the following year.

Which girls' name, popularised by a character in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night, became America's No. 1 in 2019?

Olivia was not Shakespeare's invention, though he made it fashionable; in America it did not reach the top 200 for any decade until the 1980s.

Which boys' name, third in every decade from the 1880s to the 1920s, was America's No. 1 for the 1940s and 1950s?

James was given to more than 4.5 million American boys between 1925 and 2024, more than any other name, even though it slipped as low as 19th along the way.

Which boys' name, only ninth in the 1880s, rose to be America's most popular for the 1920s and 1930s?

Robert sat in the top ten of every decade from the 1880s to the 1980s, eleven in a row, before dropping to 20th for the 1990s.

Which girls' name, from the Greek word for wisdom, was America's most popular from 2011 to 2013?

Sophia was the early Christians' name for wisdom personified, and in America it climbed from 132nd for the 1990s to third for the 2010s as a whole.

Which pet form of Elizabeth was the second most popular girls' name in the US for the 1930s?

Betty outranked Elizabeth itself for three straight decades, from the 1920s to the 1940s, then vanished from the top 200 after the 1960s.

Which boys' name, a 1950s top-twenty pick, was popularised by a film star who took it from an Indiana city?

Gary was suggested to actor Cooper by his agent, who came from Gary, Indiana, and the name peaked at ninth in 1954, the year after he won an Oscar for High Noon.

Which girls' name was so popular in the 1950s that two different spellings both made the US top ten?

Deborah ranked fifth and Debra seventh, and added together the two spellings would have beaten every other girls' name of the decade.

Which rock musician named his four children Moon Unit, Dweezil, Ahmet and Diva?

Frank Zappa's second child was registered as Ian Donald Calvin Euclid after a hospital nurse refused to put Dweezil on the birth certificate.

Which name did Prince Harry and Meghan give their daughter in 2021, borrowing Queen Elizabeth II's family nickname?

Lilibet's middle name honours her late grandmother Diana, and the family shortens her first name to Lili.

Which plant name was a top-ten girls' name in the US for both the 1970s and the 1980s?

Heather ranked eighth and then tenth, then sank to 45th for the 1990s, the decade after the dark comedy Heathers gave the name three cruel namesakes.

Which girls' name did Jonathan Swift invent by blending the surname and first name of a woman he tutored?

Vanessa joins 'Van' from Esther Vanhomrigh's surname to 'Essa', a pet form of Esther, and in 1807 it was borrowed as the name of a genus of butterflies.

Which girls' name was America's second most common from 1925 to 2024 without ever being a year's No. 1?

Patricia never placed higher than third in any single year, but it held a top-six spot for four straight decades, from the 1930s through the 1960s.

Which three-letter girls' name, from the French for 'beloved', was America's second most popular for the 1970s?

Amy sat second in the yearly US list from 1973 to 1976 without reaching the top, and Louisa May Alcott gave it to the youngest March sister in Little Women.

Which boys' name ranked third in the US for both the 1980s and the 1990s, having sat 99th for the 1950s?

Matthew owes its spread to the apostle and Gospel writer, and it held on in America's top four for the 2000s before slipping to 16th for the 2010s.

Which occupational surname hit No. 2 among US boys' names in 2011, soon after Kourtney Kardashian chose it for her son?

Mason means 'one who works with stone', and it had not made America's top 200 for any decade before the 1990s.

Which US agency publishes the official yearly list of popular baby names, based on applications for its cards?

The Social Security Administration releases the list just before Mother's Day each year and, for privacy, leaves out any name given to fewer than five babies.

In which country did a couple protest a naming-law fine in 1996 by submitting a 43-character name pronounced Albin?

Sweden's courts rejected the name, which began 'Brfxxccxxmnp' and ended in five digits, then turned down the parents' next idea, the single letter A.

Which girls' name, 11th in the US for the 1980s, is a form of Theophania once given to babies born at Epiphany?

Tiffany owes its modern boom to the 1961 film Breakfast at Tiffany's, and it sounds so recent that true-but-jarring period details are known as the Tiffany Problem.

Which boys' name vaulted from 87th in the US for the 1960s to third for the 1970s, never quite reaching No. 1?

Jason was America's runner-up every year from 1974 to 1978, and it comes from the Greek hero who led the Argonauts in the quest for the Golden Fleece.

Which girls' name ranked sixth in the US for the 1880s but had left the top 200 by the 1950s?

Minnie was already down to 102nd for the 1920s, the decade Walt Disney gave it to Mickey Mouse's sweetheart in Steamboat Willie.

Which girls' name did Sir Philip Sidney invent for his romance Arcadia, later the title of a Samuel Richardson novel?

Pamela is widely taken to mean 'all sweetness', from the Greek for 'all' and 'honey', and it stayed rare until the 1900s before reaching 13th in the US for the 1950s.

Which girls' name leapt from 66th in the 1880s to sixth in the 1890s after President Cleveland's first child was born?

Ruth Cleveland was known across America as Baby Ruth, and the Curtiss Candy Company later insisted its Baby Ruth bar honoured her, not the slugger Babe Ruth.