How popular is the baby name Ellsworth in the United States right now? How popular was it historically? Find out using the graph below! Plus, check out all the blog posts that mention the name Ellsworth.
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James A. Bill (1817-1900) of Lyme, Connecticut, served in the Connecticut state senate in 1852 and 1853 and in the Connecticut House of Representatives in 1849 and 1867. He also happened to be a rare pro-slavery Northerner in the years before and during the Civil War. This fact is reflected in the names of the last three children:
Elizabeth
Phoebe
Mary
Rebecca
Lodowick
James
Kansas Nebraska (born in July, 1855)
Lecompton Constitution (b. October, 1857)
Jefferson Davis (b. February, 1862)
Kansas Nebraska Bill was named after the Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854), which created the territories of Kansas and Nebraska, but also allowed the territories to decide for themselves whether or not they would permit slavery (the “popular sovereignty” principle).
Lecompton Constitution Bill was named after the Lecompton Constitution (1857), a proposed pro-slavery constitution for the state of Kansas that was defeated early the next year.
And Jefferson Davis Bill was, of course, named after Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederacy throughout the Civil War.
Their older brother, Lodowick, inherited his interesting first name from James’s father. The name Lodowick — like Louis, Ludwig, and Luigi — can be traced back to the Germanic name Chlodovech, which consists of the elements hlud, meaning “famous, loud” and wig, meaning “war, battle.”
We looked at the top baby name rises last month, so this month let’s look at the opposite: the top drops. That is, the baby names that decreased the most in usage, percentage-wise, from one year to the next in the Social Security Administration’s data.
Here’s the format: girl names are on the left, boy names are on the right, and the percentages represent single-year slides in usage. (For example, from 1880 to 1881, usage of the girl name Clementine dropped 68% and usage of the boy name Neil dropped 76%.)
The SSA data isn’t perfect, but it does become more accurate in the late 1930s, because “many people born before 1937 never applied for a Social Security card, so their names are not included in our data” (SSA). Now, back to the list…
I’ve already written about some of the names above (click the links to see the posts) and I plan to write about a few of the others. In the meanwhile, though, feel free to beat me to it — leave a comment and let us know why you think any of these names saw dropped in usage when they did.
Elmer E. EllsworthToday is not just the anniversary of the first manned space flight. It’s also the anniversary of the start of the Civil War. (They were exactly 100 years apart, in fact.)
I’ve seen military names catch on as baby names during times of war, so I was curious to know if this had happened during the Civil War. The problem? The war ended in 1865, so all that easy-to-access SSA data, which only dates back to 1880, wouldn’t be of any help.
But census data would work. And economist Douglas Galbi has made things easy for me: he’s used 19th-century census data to come up with lists of popular given names, sorted by decade of birth. Talk about convenient.
Using only data from the 1880 census, I looked up the following Civil War-related names:
Abraham & Lincoln – Abraham Lincoln was the leader of the Union
Jefferson & Davis – Jefferson Davis was the leader of the Confederacy
Ulysses & Grant – Ulysses S Grant commanded the Union Army at the end of the war
Robert & Lee – Robert E. Lee commanded the Confederate Army at the end of the war
William & Sherman – William T. Sherman was a Union general
Elmer & Ellsworth – Elmer E. Ellsworth was an early Union casualty
Here’s what I found. An x indicates “fewer than ten.” Also, keep in mind that the number of births overall increased significantly from decade to decade — 20,862 the first decade, 36,188 the second, 48,000 the third and 64,041 the fourth.
Name
1841-50
1851-60
1861-70
1871-80
Abraham: Lincoln:
78 x
89 11
105 35
83 x
Jefferson: Davis:
24 10
26 12
74 25
38 x
Ulysses: Grant:
x x
x x
15 94
10 43
Robert: Lee:
349 15
602 33
887 109
1,268 104
William: Sherman:
1,732 x
3,114 x
4,704 70
5,693 30
Elmer: Ellsworth:
x x
24 x
232 21
161 x
So it seems as though the Civil War did indeed give certain names a boost.
I was most surprised by Elmer. Elmer E. Ellsworth, though not well-known nowadays, captured the nation’s attention in early days of the war. He was killed in mid-1861 while trying to confiscate a Confederate flag. Here’s how the NYT ended Ellsworth’s obituary:
He has been assassinated! His murder was fearfully and speedily revenged. He has lived a brief but an eventful, a public and an honorable life. His memory will be revered, his name respected, and long after the rebellion shall have become a matter of history, his death will be regarded as a martyrdom, and his name will be enrolled upon the list of our country’s patriots.
According to Wikipedia, Ellsworth’s death inspired thousands of men to enlist. His many namesakes include U.S. Commissioner of Education Elmer Ellsworth Brown (1861-1934), artist Elmer Ellsworth Garnsey (1862-1964), Minnesota legislator Elmer Ellsworth Adams (1861-1950), and pro baseball player Elmer Ellsworth “Mike” Smith (1868-1945).
Source: “Obituary; Col. Elmer E. Ellsworth.” New York Times 25 May 1861.
*
UPDATE, 6/15/15: Turns out that the data I used for this post isn’t so reliable after all. (See the comments here for specifics.)
So here are some new numbers — basically, search “hits” for these names on the 1880 Census (via FamilySearch) grouped by birth year. These aren’t perfect either, but I think they’re an improvement.
Let’s go backwards…
Elmer & Ellsworth:
1841-50
1851-60
1861-70
1871-80
Elmer: Ellsworth:
767 55
2,686 128
21,464 2,516
16,848 878
And here are the year-by-year “hits” on Elmer specifically:
1856: 236 babies named Elmer
1857: 259 babies named Elmer
1858: 325 babies named Elmer
1859: 388 babies named Elmer
1860: 605 babies named Elmer
1861: 2,533 babies named Elmer
1862: 3,964 babies named Elmer
1863: 2,665 babies named Elmer
1864: 2,097 babies named Elmer
1865: 1,617 babies named Elmer
William & Sherman:
1841-50
1851-60
1861-70
1871-80
William: Sherman:
203,072 305
313,786 523
413,820 7,864
451,502 3,151
Robert & Lee:
1841-50
1851-60
1861-70
1871-80
Robert: Lee:
38,445 3,423
57,213 6,171
83,640 17,930
109,409 25,661
Ulysses & Grant:
1841-50
1851-60
1861-70
1871-80
Ulysses: Grant:
49 209
63 324
2,003 11,819
811 5,309
Jefferson & Davis:
1841-50
1851-60
1861-70
1871-80
Jefferson: Davis:
2,020 718
3,109 1,094
7,075 2,356
3,270 1,713
Abraham & Lincoln:
1841-50
1851-60
1861-70
1871-80
Abraham: Lincoln:
4,411 74
5,071 663
7,951 4,292
5,482 620
If anyone has any tips on using the U.S. census to get relatively accurate data on first names (only), I’m all ears!
I have a nearly 4 year old named William Benjamin, both family names. For the next child, we are considering Gillian (with a traditional J sound) for a girl. I would like another boy name that has an L in the middle, to sound similar to Will. I’ve considered Dillon, Elliot, Nolan, Nelson, Phillip. I know there must be others out there I’m not thinking of. Which one would match well?
This is a fun question. :)
Here’s a bunch of other names with an L-sound in the middle. (I left off W-names, figuring Ashley wouldn’t be interested in those.)
Alan
Albert
Alfred
Alistair
Alvin
Caleb
Calum Calvin
Coleman
Collin
Colvin
Cullen
