How popular is the baby name Glen in the United States right now? How popular was it historically? Use the popularity graph and data table below to find out! Plus, see all the blog posts that mention the name Glen.

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Popularity of the baby name Glen


Posts that mention the name Glen

Searching for “Glen Eden”

Atlas Obscura recently published an article about a man named Glen Eden Einbinder who has been collecting things bearing his first and middle names for more than 25 years.

His collection consists of “Glen Eden” postcards, bottle tops, newspaper clippings, leaflets, photographs, drink coasters, clothing, and more. The items represent various places: the Glen Eden nudist resort in California, the Glen Eden wool company in Georgia, the Glen Eden summer camp in Wisconsin, etc.

Though the two [names] together conjure up some pleasant idyll–Glen as a woodland valley, Eden as a garden–he didn’t realize the connection until he started to come across the huge volume of places that share his name.

Reader Becca pointed me to the article (thank you, Becca!) and asked about other people with this specific first-middle combo.

According to SSA data, at least 125,035 U.S. baby boys (and 1,348 U.S. baby girls) have been named single-N-Glen since 1880. So how many of these American single-N-Glens have the middle name Eden (besides Glen Eden Einbinder)?

A handful do, though I could only find definitive proof of two of them:

  • Glen Eden Hawkes (1907-1979) of Idaho
  • Glen Eden Franklin (b. 1918) of North Carolina

I also found several international Glen Edens, like these two:

  • Glen Eden Davis (1925-2003) of New South Wales, Australia
  • Glen Eden Flintoff (b. 1898) of Ontario, Canada

And there were plenty of near-misses. I found people named double-N-Glenn Eden (example), first-last Glen Eden (example), and first-last double-N-Glenn Eden (example). Plus people with first names like Gleneden, Glenedene, and Glenedena (example).

And how was Glen Eden Einbinder himself named?

Glen…is somehow related to the initials of his ancestors, with the “G” perhaps coming from a Great-Aunt Gussie. And Eden comes from the Jack London book Martin Eden, which his father was reading when Einbinder was born.

Do you have any thoughts on the combo “Glen Eden”?

P.S. This article reminded me of a documentary called The Grace Lee Project, in which an Asian-American filmmaker named Grace Lee interviews a bunch of other Asian-American women also named Grace Lee. (I think I first heard about it via Nancy Friedman.)

Name quotes #47

double quotation mark

Welcome to this month’s quote post!

From “The untold stories of Japanese war brides” (in the Washington Post) by Kathryn Tolbert:

They either tried, or were pressured, to give up their Japanese identities to become more fully American. A first step was often adopting the American nicknames given them when their Japanese names were deemed too hard to pronounce or remember. Chikako became Peggy; Kiyoko became Barbara. Not too much thought went into those choices, names sometimes imposed in an instant by a U.S. officer organizing his pool of typists. My mother, Hiroko Furukawa, became Susie.

How did it feel to be renamed for someone in the man’s past, a distant relative or former girlfriend? My mother said she didn’t mind, and others said it made their lives easier to have an American name.

From the book Cajun Country (1991) by Barry Jean Ancelet, Jay Dearborn Edwards, and Glen Pitre:

[A] few years ago the Lafourche Daily Comet ran an obituary for eighty-two-year-old Winnie Grabert Breaux. The article listed Winnie’s brothers and sisters, living and dead: Wiltz, Wilda, Wenise, Witnese, William, Willie, Wilfred, Wilson, Weldon, Ernest, Norris, Darris, Dave, Inez and Lena.

(According to Winnie’s Find a Grave profile, “Wiltz” is Wilson, “Witnese” is Witness and “Weldon” is Wildon. Here’s a recent post on Cajun nicknames.)

From “JFK’s legacy in Bogotá lives on 55-years later” (in The City Paper) by Andy East:

It was Dec. 17, 1961, and nearly one-third of Bogotá’s 1.5 million inhabitants had turned out on a sunny Sunday afternoon for one reason: to catch a glimpse of President John F. Kennedy and First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy. The massive outpouring was the largest reception the U.S. leader ever had.

[…]

The historic visit, which lasted only 14 hours, would change the lives of thousands of families and have a profound impact on the city that is still visible 55 years later.

[…]

In the immediate years after Kennedy’s visit, the most popular baby names registered at baptisms in Ciudad Kennedy were John, Fitzgerald (Kennedy’s middle name), Jacqueline and Kennedy.

(Here’s a recent post about U.S. babies named for JFK.)

Fighting for Aboriginal baby names in N.W.T.

map of languages in N.W.T.
Some of the official languages of N.W.T.

In early March, two First Nations mothers in Northwest Territories (N.W.T.), Canada, made headlines because they were not allowed to use the traditional character for a glottal stop, “?,” in their children’s names.

The first was Chipewyan mother Shene Catholique Valpy, whose daughter Sahai?a was born in February of 2014. Valpy was forced to change the “?” character to a hyphen in order to register her daughter’s name.

The second was South Slavey mother Andrea Heron, who had been forced to do the same thing six years earlier in order to register her daughter Sakae?ah’s name.

(Ironically, Sahai?a and Sakae?ah are the Chipewyan and South Slavey versions of the same name. The rough translation is: “as the sun breaks through the clouds or over the horizon.”)

Currently, N.W.T. only allows characters from the Roman alphabet on birth certificates.

Not long after the stories about Sahai?a and Sakae?ah surfaced, N.W.T. health minister Glen Abernethy said his department would start looking for a solution to the problem, but was concerned that allowing the characters regionally “could create problems down the road.” “We need to make sure that those individuals with the fonts in their names aren’t disadvantaged when they want to go to college outside the N.W.T. or travel abroad or get a social insurance number.”

But Dene languages expert Brent Kaulback notes that “Dene fonts are now unicode fonts” that work on any computer. And linguistics professor Arok Wolvengrey calls the refusal to allow the glottal stop character a “serious insult” to First Nations people. “For many people who no longer speak these languages, this is the only way they can preserve their ancestry.”

(For the record, neighbor territory Nunavut allows Inuit to “register traditional names, including the glottal stop, for government documents.”)

Sources: Chipewyan baby name not allowed on N.W.T. birth certificate, 2nd N.W.T. mother demands traditional name for daughter, N.W.T. Health minister seeks fix for aboriginal names, What’s in a name? A Chipewyan’s battle over her native tongue
Image: Official Languages of the Northwest Territories (pdf)

Starbucks patrons help choose baby’s name

Connecticut couple Jennifer James, 25, and Mark Dixon, 24, are expecting a baby boy in September.

They couldn’t decide between the names Jackson and Logan, so they took it to a vote…at their local Starbucks.

The couple got the idea for the voting based on a system used by that Starbucks location, where customers cast votes for its employee of the month.

“We saw that and thought we might as well see how it works,” Dixon said.

Nearly 1,800 votes were cast, “not including people who voted more than once.” Most people voted for either Logan or Jackson, but other votes were for “neither,” “Chaz,” “Obama,” “Lincoln” and “Webster.”

Logan won by a margin of about “400 or 500” votes, said Mark.

So the baby’s name will be Logan Jackson Dixon.

“The couple planned to end their contest Tuesday and make a poster to hang in the store, notifying customers which name won.”

Too bad Glen was never a contender.

Source: “West Haven couple lets Starbucks drinkers vote on name for their baby.” New Haven Register 25 Jun. 2013