How popular is the baby name Eileen 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 Eileen.
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From the 1910s to the 1930s, the rare name Greer occasionally popped in the in the U.S. baby name data as a boy name. In the early 1940s, though, it suddenly started being given to baby girls:
1943: 37 baby girls and 10 baby boys named Greer
1942: 15 baby girls and 6 baby boys named Greer
1941: 5 baby girls named Greer
1940: unlisted
1939: unlisted
In fact, from 1941 onward, the name Greer has been given more often to baby girls than to baby boys:
What caused the switch?
Red-haired British actress Greer Garson, who was most popular in America during the early-to-mid 1940s. She was nominated for the Oscar for Best Actress seven times, though she won only once (for her role in the 1942 movie Mrs. Miniver).
Her birth name was Eileen Evelyn Greer Garson; Greer was her mother’s maiden name. She began going by “Greer Garson” in the early 1930s, while she was still a stage actress in England.
Louis B. Mayer, head of MGM studios, discovered Garson in 1937 while he was abroad hunting for talent. After that particular trip, he sailed back to the U.S. with Garson and several other finds:
Also on board were two Austrian actresses named Hedy Kiesler and Rose Stradner, screenwriter Walter Reisch, and two singers, Hungarian Ilona Hajmassy, and Polish Miliza Korjus. While Mayer renamed Hedy Kiesler “Hedy Lamarr” and changed Ilona Hajmassy to “Ilona Massey,” he was stumped when it came to Greer and Miliza Korjus. Ultimately, he settled with Howard Strickling [head of MGM’s publicity department] to start a publicity campaign for Korjus (“her name rhymes with gorgeous!”), and left Greer’s name alone. But for years he would continue to complain that her name was not feminine enough.
The surname Greer is related to the personal name Gregory, which means “watchful, alert.”
What are your thoughts on the name Greer? Do you like it better as a girl name or as a boy name?
P.S. The top image of (a very bejeweled) Greer Garson comes from her appearance on the TV game show “What’s My Line?” in April of 1958.
P.P.S. At the height of her fame, Greer Garson owned two standard poodles with the rhyming names Gogo and Clicquot (pronounced klee-koh).
Sources:
“Greer Garson’s Poodles Go to School for Manners.” Life 23 Jun. 1941: 80.
If you’re on the hunt for baby names with a numerological value of 5, you’re in luck! Because today’s post features hundreds of 5-names.
Before we get to the names, though — how do we know that they’re “fives” in numerology?
Turning names into numbers
Here’s how to calculate the numerological value of a name.
First, for each letter, come up with a number to represent that letter’s position in the alphabet. (Letter A would be number 1, letter B would be number 2, and so forth.) Then, add all the numbers together. If the sum has two or more digits, add the digits together recursively until the result is a single digit. That single digit is the name’s numerological value.
For instance, the letters in the name Peyton correspond to the numbers 16, 5, 25, 20, 15, and 14. The sum of these numbers is 95. The digits of 95 added together equal 14, and the digits of 14 added together equal 5 — the numerological value of Peyton.
Baby names with a value of 5
Below you’ll find the most popular 5-names per gender, according to the latest U.S. baby name data. I’ve further sub-categorized them by total sums — just in case any of those larger numbers are significant to anyone.
5 via 14
The letters in the following baby names add up to 14, which reduces to five (1+4=5).
Girl names (5 via 14)
Boy names (5 via 14)
Ida, Adah, Caia, Dia, Becca
Ahad, Adi, Dj, Kc, Jac
5 via 23
The letters in the following baby names add up to 23, which reduces to five (2+3=5).
Girl names (5 via 23)
Boy names (5 via 23)
Mia, Alia, Aila, Adela, Cara, Addie, Laia, Edie, Jaci, Ami
Caleb, Coda, Acen, Iam, Adem
5 via 32
The letters in the following baby names add up to 32, which reduces to five (3+2=5).
There’s no definitive answer, unfortunately, because various numerological systems exist, and each one has its own interpretation of the number five. That said, if we look at a couple of modern numerology/astrology websites, we see 5 being described as “freedom-loving,” “dynamic,” “adaptable,” “curious,” and “unpredictable.”
We can also look at associations, which are a bit more concrete. Here are some things that are associated with the number 5:
Fingers
High-five (hand gesture)
Toes
Senses (sight, smell, touch, taste, hearing)
Tastes (sweet, salty, sour, bitter, umami)
Starfish (most starfish have 5 arms)
Basketball (5 players per side)
Olympic Games (symbolized by 5 interlocked rings)
Greek classical elements (water, earth, air, fire, aether)
Quintessence (refers to the fifth element, aether, which was a late addition to the list)
Chinese traditional elements (water, fire, earth, wood, metal)
What does the number 5 mean to you? What are your strongest associations with the number?
P.S. To see names with other numerological values, check out the posts for the numbers one, two, three, four, six, seven, eight, and nine.
Years ago I posted about Livonia, a baby both born on and named after a Pullman car. Recently I wondered: What other Pullman car names would have made good baby names?
So I downloaded a big spreadsheet of over 12,000 Pullman car names from The Pullman Project and was slightly surprised to see that thousands of them could have been baby names, if we allow for the splitting of compound car names (like Fort Miley, Glen Norman, Meredith College, and West Willow).
Here are a handful of examples. On the left are relatively common/familiar names, and on the right are some unexpected choices.
Marion and Charlotte “Lottie” Story of Bakersfield, California, had at least 22 children — including five sets of twins — from 1922 to 1946. Seventeen of their kids are listed on the 1940 U.S. Census (see below).
I don’t know the names of all the Story children, but here are 20 of them: Jean, Jane, Jack, Jacqueline, June, Eileen, Clyde, Robert, James, Jeannette, Steve, Jerry, Terry (sometimes “Terrytown”), Charlotte, Scotty, Sherrie, Garry, Joanne, Frances (called Lidwina), and Monica (called Sandy).
Charlotte Story herself was one of a dozen children, born from 1899 to 1919. Her 11 siblings were named Pearl, George, Rhea, Hazel, Fern, Ira, Myrtle, Dorothy, Helen, Russell, and Viola.
And Charlotte’s mother Elsie was one of 13 children, born from 1865 to 1892. Her 12 siblings were named Edward, Levi, William, Frank, Rosa, Joseph, Mary, Elizabeth, Margaret, Archibald, Gertrude, and Emma.
So here’s the question: If you had to choose all of your own children’s names from just one of the sibsets above, which set would you pick? Why?
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