How popular is the baby name Mike 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 Mike.

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Popularity of the baby name Mike


Posts that mention the name Mike

Where did the baby name Mannix come from in 1967?

The character Joe Mannix from the TV show "Mannix" (1967-1975).
Joe Mannix from “Mannix”

The main character of the memorably violent TV series Mannix was Los Angeles private investigator Joseph “Joe” Mannix (played by Mike Connors). The show premiered in 1967 and, the same year, the baby name Mannix debuted in the U.S. baby name data:

  • 1969: 9 baby boys named Mannix
  • 1968: 13 baby boys named Mannix
  • 1967: 7 baby boys named Mannix [debut]
  • 1966: unlisted
  • 1965: unlisted

The name remained in the data while the show was on the air, but disappeared after the series was canceled in 1975.

It didn’t stay away long, though. In fact, it’s been a regular in the data since actress Angelina Jolie made the like-sounding name Maddox trendy.

So what does Mannix mean? It’s an Anglicized Irish surname meaning “descendant of Manachán” — Manachán being a personal named derived from the Gaelic word manach, meaning “monk.”

Do you like the name Mannix? Do you like it more or less than Maddox?

Sources:

  • Hanks, Patrick. (Ed.) Dictionary of American Family Names. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.
  • Mannix – Wikipedia

P.S. Mike Connors’ legal name was Krekor Ohanian. (He was of Armenian descent.) His agent, Henry Willson — famous for re-naming actors like Tab Hunter and Rock Hudson — gave him the stage name “Touch Connors” at the start of his career. (“Touch” was a nickname the actor had acquired on the basketball court.) Connors disliked the name, but it wasn’t until later in his career that he was permitted to change “Touch” to “Mike.”

Baby born in France, named Canard (“duck”)

duck

In 2021, the most popular baby names in the French commune of Périgueux were Anna/Iris (tied) and Jules.

The name Canard, on the other hand — the French word for “duck” — was only given to one of the 1,513 babies born in Périgueux last year. That baby was Dyklan Canard, born in August of 2021.

What’s the story behind Dyklan’s unusual middle name?

The baby’s grandfather, tattoo artist Jean-Christophe Bret-Canard, said that his own mother, Georgette, had been a war orphan during WWII. Originally born into a family travellers, she was abandoned in 1943 in front of a church in the town of Châtellerault. She was cared for in an orphanage until, several months later, she was was adopted by a man named Georges Canard, “a French soldier who later worked on the railways and was engaged in the resistance.”

Jean-Christophe has always seen his mother’s surname as a source of pride. He sports a number of duck tattoos — his tattoo parlor is even called Duck — and he gave all four of his sons the middle name Canard.

And one of those sons, Mike, continued the tradition last year by passing the name down to his own son, Dyklan Canard.

(I discovered this story via Appellation Mountain — thank you Abby!)

Sources: French baby named ‘Canard’ is heir to tragic but proud family history, Une famille de Dordogne explique pourquoi elle a appelé son fils “Canard”, Périgord: pourquoi cette famille a choisi de donner “Canard” comme deuxième prénom à son enfant, En Périgord, “Canard” peut aussi être un prénom

Image: Adapted from Anas platyrhynchos male JdP 2013-05-02 by Marie-Lan Nguyen under CC BY 2.5.

Popular baby names in Liechtenstein, 2020

Flag of Liechtenstein
Flag of Liechtenstein

The tiny country of Liechtenstein — located in the Alps, between Austria and Switzerland — welcomed 188 baby girls and 165 baby boys in 2020. According to Liechtenstein’s Office for Statistics (Amt für Statistik), the most popular baby names in the German-speaking microstate were Sofia and Maximilian/Oscar (tie).

Here are Liechtenstein’s top girl names and top boy names of 2020:

Girl Names

  1. Sofia/Sophia, 7 baby girls
  2. Laura, 5
  3. Hanna/Hannah, 4
  4. Amélie/Amelie, Anna, Annika, Emma, Julia, Lina, Mia, Nina, Noemi, Nora, Sophie, and Valentina, 3 each [12-way tie]
  5. Alya, Amelia, Elena, Elisa/Eliza, Ella, Emilia, Estelle, Klara, Lara, Leonie, Letizia, Luisa, Malia/Maliyah, Mara, Melissa, Mina, Naomi, Noelia, and Paula, 2 each [19-way tie]

Boy Names

  1. Maximilian and Oscar/Oskar, 4 baby boys each [tie]
  2. Laurin, Leo, Lian/Lyan, Luis/Louis, Noah/Noa, and Theo, 3 each [6-way tie]
  3. Gustav, Henri, Ivan/Iwan, Lenny, Leon, Leopold, Matteo, Max, Muhamed/Muhammed, Nico, Nino, Noel, and Thiago/Tiago, 2 each [13-way tie]

(Lian, one of the 2nd-place boy names, is a German short form of Julian or Kilian.)

Liechtenstein also released the single-use baby names of 2020, which is very cool. All the names not accounted for above are in the table below:

Unique girl names (98)Unique boy names (113)
Adea, Adriana, Ahlam, Aitana, Alejna, Alenia, Alina, Ally, Alya-Su, Amina, Amy, Anastasia, Anely, Annalena, Anna-Rosa, Anouk, Aria, Ariana, Aslihan, Aurora, Bissan, Carolina, Cecilia, Chiara, Clea, Cora, Darija, Elenia, Elina, Elizabeta, Elizan, Elna, Eltea, Emanuela, Esîlya, Fabia, Farah, Fatima, Fjella, Georgie-Gisele, Gioia, Giulia, Helena, Ida, Ilenia, Iris, Irma, Ivy, Jamie, Joleen, Joya, Juna, Kaia, Katharina, Keysi, Ksenija, Lena, Leonor, Lilian, Liyana, Loredana, Lorena, Luana, Luena, Maeva, Malak, Maria, Maria-Luisa, Marie, Melina, Merle, Mia-Sophie, Miira, Mila, Mira, Naila, Natalia, Nayeli, Nelia, Nika, Riva, Rivanna, Romy, Ronja, Salima, Samira, Sandrina, Senada, Soley, Tajra, Teresa, Tina, Valérie, Viviana, Xoawa, Yara, Yesim, ZeynepAaron, Adrián, Aidan, Ajan, Alessandro, Alonso, Alp, Anas, Aril, Armon, Arthur, Aurel, Aurelio, Benedikt, Benjamin, Benno, Bruno, Christian, Christoph, Clark, Curdin, Cyano, Damiano, Danilo, Dante, Davide, Dominik, Eduardo, Elija, Elvis, Emanuel, Emil, Emilian, Emilio, Enes, Erian, Erion, Fabian, Federico, Finn, Gabriele, Giuliano, Hamza, Hazar, Hendrick, Jamie, Jan, Jari, Jeremias, Jérôme, Johannes, Jonah, Jonas, Jorel, Julian, Kentse, Kiano, Konstantin, Lauri, Leart, Levin, Liam, Liandro, Linus, Lio, Lionel, Lorent, Luan, Macgyver, Mahir, Majiid, Marco, Marius, Martim, Massimo, Mats, Maurice, Michael, Michele, Mike, Mikyas, Milan, Nael, Nando, Nawin, Neo, Nick, Nicolas, Niklas, Oliver, Omer, Paul, Philomeno, Pierangelo, Raffi, Ragnar, Redford, Rico, Ruben, Samuel, Sebastian, Tenzin, Tino, Tobias, Umut, Valentino, Valerio, Victor, Vito, Yakup, Yanis, Yuusuf, Zeno

Finally, since this is the first time I’m posting rankings for Liechtenstein, let’s throw in the country’s top baby names for the two previous years:

  • In 2019: Emma (9) and a four-way tie between Fabio, Leon, Matteo and Paul (4 each).
  • In 2018: Valentina (7) and a three-way tie between Ben, Leon, and Samuel (4 each).

Sources: Vornamenstatistik – Amt für Statistik (AS), Liechtenstein – Wikipedia, Behind the Name

Image: Adapted from Flag of Liechtenstein (public domain)

Name quotes #101

double quotation mark

From the 2004 book The Agassi Story, in which Andre Agassi‘s father, Emanoul, recounts renting a room on his first night in America (after emigrating from Armenia):

“Name?” asked the clerk.

Names are so important; they have so much to do with an individual’s personality, with what kind of person he or she becomes. Take the name Phil. Have you ever met a Phil who wasn’t easygoing? My oldest son is named Phil, Phillip, and that’s just what he is: Easygoing. Or consider the name Andre. It’s an aggressive name, a flamboyant name, and that’s just how my son Andre turned out to be.

So I thought a moment, and answered “Mike Agassi.” Mike was a simple name and I liked it. It sounded American. Honorable. More importantly, it was a name I could spell.

From a 2004 article about the usage of brand names as personal names in the Baltimore Sun:

When Virginia Hinton, a professor emeritus at Kennesaw State University, was researching a book on the history of St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Milledgeville, Ga., she came across a girl named Nylic who was born around 1900. Nylic’s mother was an organist at the church, and her father was the local representative for the New York Life Insurance Co. — abbreviated NYLIC.

For more quotes about names, check out the name quotes category.