How popular is the baby name Decillian 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 Decillian.

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Popularity of the baby name Decillian


Posts that mention the name Decillian

Toledo brothers named One & Two

Headstone of Two Stickney (1810-1862)
Two Stickney’s headstone

In the mid-1830s, the state of Ohio and the territory of Michigan fought over a 468-square-mile strip of land containing Toledo. Their border dispute became known as the Toledo War.

During that period, tensions between the two regions ran high. At one point, for instance, the sheriff of Michigan’s Monroe County took to arresting “anyone in the Ohio strip who was promoting Toledo going to Ohio.”

Map of the disputed strip of land between Michigan and Ohio.
The disputed strip of land between Michigan and Ohio

His arrests included “one of Toledo’s founding fathers,” Benjamin Franklin Stickney. Originally from New England — and named after his mother’s uncle, the actual Benjamin Franklin — Stickney had moved his family westward in 1812 after being appointed as an Indian Agent at Fort Wayne.

By the time he arrived in Fort Wayne, Mr. Stickney already had fostered a reputation as an odd personality and independent thinker. The eccentric rap came largely from Mr. Stickney’s decision to name his sons One and Two.

His apparent reasoning, according to legend, was that the boys could name themselves when they grew older, but they never did. Mr. Stickney had wanted to name his three daughters after states, but his wife forbid it for the first two. He won out after the birth of his last child, born at Fort Wayne in 1817. He called her Indiana.

(One Stickney was born in 1803. Two Stickney was born in 1810. Between them were two daughters named Louisa and Mary. The fifth baby was indeed named after the state of Indiana, but her name was spelled “Indianna.”)

Stickney’s arrest angered his son Two, who ended up stabbing the Monroe County sheriff in the side with a pen knife in July of 1835. This non-fatal injury was the only casualty in the nearly-bloodless Toledo War.

The conflict finally ended in mid-1836, when the U.S. Congress proposed a compromise. Ohio would be given the disputed strip of land (and the city of Toledo), while Michigan would be given statehood and the remainder of the Upper Peninsula.

Sources:

Image (2nd one): Adapted from Disputed Toledo Strip by Drdpw under CC BY-SA 3.0.

P.S. Other families with number-names include the Rosado family of Brazil and Ten & Decillian Million of Washington state.

41 Pun-names for April Fools’ Day (4/1)

I can’t play a prank on you for April Fools’ Day, but I can give you a list of personal names that seem like pranks.

Except, they’re not.

All of the below are legit first & last names that belonged to real people — often multiple people. (In parentheses I’ve added rough estimates of how many instances I’ve come across so far.)

  1. Alma Mater (several)
  2. April Showers (dozens)
  3. Bear Trapp (one)
  4. Candy Cane (several)
  5. Cliff Hanger (several)
  6. Constant Agony (two)
  7. Constant Craps (one)
  8. Crystal Ball (dozens)
    • There’s also Krystal Ball, who ran for office in Virginia a few years back.
  9. Death Knox (one)
  10. Drew Peacock (dozens)
  11. Gettysburg Battle (one)
  12. Gold Mine (two)
  13. Green Bean (several)
  14. Hazel Nut/Nutt (dozens)
  15. Ima Hogg (one)
  16. Jed I Knight (one)
  17. London England (dozens)
  18. Mud Brown (three)
  19. Never Fail (two) — father and son
    • The son’s headstone offers context for the name by referencing 1 Corinthians 13: “Love never fails.”
  20. Norman Conquest (two)
  21. North West (hundreds)
  22. Nude Mann (one)
  23. Orbit Moon (one)
  24. Orchestra Harp (one)
  25. Paris France (several)
  26. Preserved Fish (several)
  27. Pullman Carr (several), one with the middle name Palace, as in the Pullman Palace Car Company.
  28. Rainy Day (one)
  29. River Bottom (one)
  30. Rocky Mountain (dozens)
  31. Sandy Beach (dozens)
  32. Sea Shore (several)
  33. Seymour Butts (two) — not just a Bart Simpson prank call!
  34. Silence Bellows (one)
  35. Soda Popp (one)
  36. Strong Beer (one)
  37. Tell No Lyes (several)
  38. Ten Million (one), who had a daughter named Decillian Million.
  39. Timber Wood (one), who has a sister named Drift Wood.
  40. Truly Wright (several)
  41. Tu Morrow (one)

Which one do you think is the best? Or should I say, the worst?

Source: Find A Grave

Numbers as baby names: Seven, 8, Ten

I posted recently about using a number system to choose names. But what about using numbers themselves as names?

An old episode of Seinfeld made fun of number-names. In it, George mused over the name Seven: “It’s a beautiful name for a boy or a girl… especially a girl. Or a boy.”

A year after the episode aired, songstress Erykah Badu really did name her son Seven. Possible connection?

Other real-life number-names I know of include Ten Million and his daughter Decillian Million.

There’s also Japanese naval officer Yamamoto Isoroku, whose first (Isoroku) name spelled out the number 56 — a reference to his father’s age at the time of his birth.

Would you use a number as a baby name? Why or why not?

Unusual real names: Ten Million, Decillian Million

Baseball player Ten Million (1889-1964)
Ten Million

Ten Million of Washington state was a minor league baseball player during the early 1900s. His mother, Ella Million, chose the name “Ten” because she wanted her son to stand out.

He sometimes signed his name by simply writing the number “10.”

In 1920, Ten and his wife Christine had a baby girl. Ten’s mother convinced the couple to name their daughter “Decillian” with a bribe of $50. (That’d be over $1,100 in today’s dollars.)

Decillian Million went by “Dixie” as an adult.

Later in the 1920s, Ten worked as a Ford automobile salesman. “When the 10 millionth Ford automobile rolled off the assembly line, it was taken on a tour of the United States, and a Seattle newspaper ran a photo of the car with Ten Million.”

Sources:

Image: Ten Million, Victoria Team, baseball card portrait (LOC)