How popular is the baby name Ike 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 Ike.
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Tuesday’s post about the Victorian-style Tylney Hall Hotel reminded me of a list of Victorian-era names that I’ve had bookmarked forever.
The list was created by amateur genealogist G. M. Atwater as a resource for writers. It contains names and name combinations that were commonly seen in the U.S. from the 1840s to the 1890s. Below is the full list (with a few minor changes).
| Victorian Era Female Names | Victorian Era Male Names |
|---|---|
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Which female name and male name do you like best?
Dwight D. Eisenhower’s mom didn’t like nicknames.
The future president, who was born in 1890, was going to be named “David Dwight Eisenhower” — David for his father, Dwight for evangelist Dwight Lyman Moody — until Mrs. Eisenhower realized that David would inevitably be shortened to Dave.
It was the contraction of Edgar’s name to Ed and another brother’s name from Arthur to Art that inspired Mrs. Eisenhower to try to forestall the cognomen of Dave for the son who was to lead the Allied armies in the second world war.
So she reversed David and Dwight.
But it made no difference. Dwight’s boyhood friends started called him “Little Ike” (because his older brother Edgar was called “big Ike”) and Ike stuck.
(Eisenhower biographer Stephen Ambrose tells a different story. He says Mrs. Eisenhower reversed the order of the names because she wanted to avoid the confusion of having two Davids in the family.)
Weirdly, I have three other posts that mention Eisenhower: How did Dwight D. Eisenhower influence baby names?, Pakistani Baby Named After Eisenhower, and Babies named for Sputnik.
Sources:
In December of 1959, President Dwight D. Eisenhower went on a 3-week, 11-nation tour. He visited Italy, Turkey, Pakistan, Afghanistan, India, Iran, Greece, Tunisia, France, Germany, and Morocco [video].
While he was in Pakistan, a baby born in Liaquatabad was named “Ike Khan” in his honor.
Source: “Baby Named Ike Khan.” Los Angeles Times 18 Dec. 1959: A11.
Taylor, Tyler, Madison, Jackson…sure, they’re presidential surnames, but if you met a kid with one of these names you wouldn’t assume that he/she was named after a former commander-in-chief.
Not so with Eisenhower.
The one and only time the name Eisenhower appeared in the U.S. baby name data was the year Dwight D. Eisenhower was elected president (the first time):
And the Social Security Death Index (SSDI) reveals that at least four more people have been named Eisenhower — two were born in the ’40s, one in ’53, and one in the ’70s.
The German occupational surname means “iron-hewer” or “iron-cutter.”
The name Dwight became more popular during the 1950s as well, seeing peak usage in 1953:
And let’s not forget Eisenhower’s famous campaign slogan, “I Like Ike.” His nickname — typically short for Isaac, but in this case based on the first syllable of his surname — also got a boost:
And people still like Ike — in 2010, 59 boys were named Ike (coming down from a spike in 2008, courtesy of Hurricane Ike.)
*Here’s one more baby Ike from 1959.