How popular is the baby name Mountain 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 Mountain.

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Popularity of the baby name Mountain


Posts that mention the name Mountain

Where did the baby name Landis come from in 1907?

Baseball commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis (1866-1944).
Ken Landis

Yesterday’s post told the story behind Kenesaw Mountain Landis‘ unique name. But there’s even more to the story…

In 1895, Kenesaw Landis returned to Chicago and founded a law firm with two other lawyers

A decade later, President Theodore Roosevelt appointed him a U.S. District Judge for Northern Illinois.

His “involvement in [various] high profile cases, combined with his flair for theatrics, brought his decisions and behavior to national attention. After Standard Oil [in 1907], Landis was dubbed the “most talked of persona in America.”

So he was already a well-known public figure by the time he became the first commissioner of professional baseball in late 1920 (which was not long after news of the Black Sox scandal broke).

Why am I getting into all this detail about Kenesaw Landis?

Because, once he became relatively famous, he began acquiring namesakes of his own!

The name Landis, for instance, debuted in the baby data in 1907 and nearly doubled in usage in 1920:

  • 1922: 17 baby boys named Landis
  • 1921: 18 baby boys named Landis
  • 1920: 23 baby boys named Landis
  • 1919: 12 baby boys named Landis
  • 1918: 13 baby boys named Landis
  • 1917: 14 baby boys named Landis
  • 1916: 17 baby boys named Landis
  • 1915: 13 baby boys named Landis
  • 1914: 7 baby boys named Landis
  • 1913: 7 baby boys named Landis
  • 1912: 6 baby boys named Landis
  • 1911: unlisted
  • 1910: 5 baby boys named Landis
  • 1909: unlisted
  • 1908: unlisted
  • 1907: 6 baby boys named Landis [debut]
  • 1906: unlisted
  • 1905: unlisted
Graph of the usage of the baby name Landis in the U.S. since 1880
Usage of the baby name Landis

The German surname Landis was derived from the Middle High German word landoese, “landless,” which was originally a “nickname for a highwayman or for someone who lays waste to the land.”

Even more interesting, though, are the dozens of boys who got other permutations of his name, such as…

Plus there’s Kenesaw Mountain Landis II — Ken’s own nephew, born in 1910 in Indiana to his younger brother Frederick.

Sources:

How did Kenesaw Mountain Landis get his name?

Baseball commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis (1866-1944)
Kenesaw Mountain Landis

If you know Major League Baseball history, no doubt you’re familiar with Kenesaw Mountain “Ken” Landis, who served as professional baseball’s first commissioner from 1921 to 1944.

But…do you know how he got that unusual name?

In 1862 — in the middle of the Civil War — Ken’s father, Dr. Abraham Landis, left his family behind in Ohio to serve as a surgeon in the Union Army. (His family, at that time, consisted of wife Mary and five young children.)

Abraham was severely wounded at the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain in Georgia on June 27, 1864. He spent many weeks in the hospital recovering before he was finally able to return home.

His sixth child, a son, arrived on November 20, 1866 — long after the war was over.

[I]t took Dr. and Mrs. Landis some time to decide on his name. In fact, the delay in providing a name prompted both family and community members to suggest a deluge of different names. Mary Landis did not like the name Abraham, so when Dr. Landis suggested calling their son “Kenesaw,” the name and alternate spelling stuck. Clearly, the site of the doctor’s personal tragedy remained in his thoughts.

The name of the mountain is an Anglicized form of the Cherokee name Gahneesah, which means “burial ground” or “place of the dead.”

(All of Ken’s eventual six siblings had more ordinary names: Katherine, Frances, Walter, Charles, John, and Frederick.)

Ken went on to pass the bar exam and attend law school (in that order) and, by the early 1890s, was practicing law in Chicago. Within a couple of years, he was offered (and accepted) a job in the federal government:

In the Union Army, Abraham Landis was under the command of Lt. Col. Walter Quinton Gresham during Sherman’s advance through Tennessee and Georgia. […] In 1893 Gresham was appointed secretary of state by President Grover Cleveland. He needed a personal secretary and he chose a 26-year-old Chicago attorney with no knowledge of foreign affairs, Kenesaw Mountain Landis.

When Gresham unexpectedly died in 1895, Grover Cleveland offered Ken the post of minister to Venezuela. Ken declined this offer to return to private practice in Chicago and to get married to his fiancée, Winifred Reed.

A year later, Kenesaw and Winifred welcomed their first child, a son named Reed Gresham Landis — middle name in honor of Ken’s late boss (and his father’s former commander).

I have more to say about Kenesaw Mountain Landis, but I’ll save the rest for tomorrow. In the meanwhile, here’s a post about Malvern Hill — another unusual baby name inspired by a Civil War battle/location.

Sources:

Unusual political names in Connecticut

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:

  1. Elizabeth
  2. Phoebe
  3. Mary
  4. Rebecca
  5. Lodowick
  6. James
  7. Kansas Nebraska (born in July, 1855)
  8. Lecompton Constitution (b. October, 1857)
  9. 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.”

[Other notable Civil War-era baby names include Emancipation Proclamation (“Prockie”), Gettysburg (“Gettie”), Kenesaw Mountain, and Elmer Ellsworth.]

Sources:

Popular baby names in Sonoma County (California), 2016

Flag of California
Flag of California

According to the Sonoma County site SoCo Data, the most popular baby names in 2016 were Emma and Mateo.

Here are the county’s top 5 girl names and top 5 boy names of 2016:

Girl Names
1. Emma, 34 baby girls
2. Sophia, 28
3. Olivia, 27
4. Isabella, 23
5. Ava and Sofia, 21 (2-way tie)

Boy Names
1. Mateo, 35 baby boys
2. Sebastian and William, 26 (2-way tie)
3. Benjamin, 24
4. David and Lucas, 23 (2-way tie)
5. Jayden, 21

The top names in 2015 were a pair of ties: Ava & Olivia and Mateo & Daniel.

And, currently, the top names of 2017 are Mia and Mateo. (The dataset was last updated on October 2.)

Finally, here are some of the baby names that were bestowed just once in Sonoma in 2016:

Unique Girl NamesUnique Boy Names
Amerabelle, Atlantis, Bleena, Calandra, Dallary, Diosa, Evaluna, Happy, Ivoryana, Jerusha, Kessley, Liliokalani, Maridahlia, Nabella, Parmys, Ravellen, Seva, Tajalli, Tusita, Velisse, Yadzell, Zemyna, ZylaAeson, Ayris, Baxley, Cassius Clyde, Caulder, Coyote, Dorlan, Fling, Helio, Jaxper, Jenry, Kavari, Knoxville, Kolinio, Macario, Mountain, Nasric, Nyan, Olavio, Rigel, Rorik, Sonnen, Xompakh, Yolotli, Zaqarry

Source: SoCo Data

Image: Adapted from Flag of California (public domain)