How popular is the baby name Tecumseh 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 Tecumseh.

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Popularity of the baby name Tecumseh


Posts that mention the name Tecumseh

Babies named for William Tecumseh Sherman

U.S. Army general William Tecumseh Sherman (1820-1891)
William T. Sherman

William Tecumseh Sherman was a general in the Union Army during the American Civil War.

He served just under Ulysses S. Grant much of the time. In 1864, when Grant was appointed commander of all Union armies, Sherman succeeded him as the commander of the Western Theater. In 1869, when Grant began his first term as U.S. President, Sherman succeeded him as Commanding General of the U.S. Army. (He remained in that position until 1883.)

Many baby boys were named in honor of General Sherman, particularly in the mid-1860s. It’s hard to know just how many hundreds of namesakes he had, though, given all the possible permutations of his name, and the fact that both “William” and “Sherman” were quite common. Some examples…

Boys born into Sherman families simply got the given names “William Tecumseh,” or “William T.” Dozens of other families dropped “William” altogether, opting for “Tecumseh Sherman,” or just “Tecumseh.”

Speaking of Tecumseh…how did William T. Sherman come to have such a distinctive middle name?

He was born in Ohio in 1820, the middle child (#6) of 11 siblings. In his memoir, he said that his father, Charles, had “caught a fancy for the great chief of the Shawnees, “Tecumseh.””

When, in 1816, my brother James was born, he insisted on engrafting the Indian name “Tecumseh” on the usual family list. My mother had already named her first son after her own brother Charles; and insisted on the second son taking the name of her other brother James, and when I came along, on the 8th of February, 1820, mother having no more brothers, my father succeeded in his original purpose, and named me William Tecumseh.

Interestingly, one of General Sherman’s nephews — the the son of his younger brother Lampson — was was born in 1861 and named after Elmer E. Ellsworth.

Sources:

P.S. The most notable non-human thing named after General Sherman would have to be the world’s largest tree, the General Sherman Tree in California.

Babies named for Elmer Ellsworth

U.S. Army soldier Elmer E. Ellsworth (1837-1861)
Elmer Ephraim Ellsworth

U.S. Army officer Elmer E. Ellsworth is virtually unknown nowadays, but he was very well known during the 1860s.

Why?

Because he was killed in May of 1861 while trying to confiscate a Confederate flag. This made him the very first Union officer to die in the Civil War.

Here’s how the New York Times concluded 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.

Ellsworth’s death was the first conspicuous casualty of the War, and it inspired thousands of men to enlist.

It also inspired thousands (yes, literally thousands) of Union-supporting families to name their newborns “Elmer Ellsworth.”

(This is one of those names that makes me wish the SSA data went back further than 1880. I would have loved to see the spike in Elmers in 1861-1862.)

Some of Elmer’s more famous namesakes include…

And less-famous namesakes include…

Others got the names out of order (e.g., Ellsworth Elmer Lesher), and those already in Ellsworth families simply got some version of “Elmer E.” (e.g., Elmer Everett Ellsworth).

The massive number of Elmer Ellsworths born in the early 1860s was even referenced in this anecdote by newspaperman Fred C. Kelly eighty years later:

[A] friend of mine, named Osborn, doesn’t profess to be gifted in second sight, but he once mystified a stranger by telling him that he — the stranger — was born in April, May, or June, 1861; moreover, that he was born in a Union state, and that his father was an enthusiastic Northern sympathizer during the Civil War. He knew all this just by noting that the man’s first two initials were “E.E.” The whole thing was a matter of simple deduction. The man appeared to be the age of one born during the Civil War. Osborn happened to know that one of the great Northern heroes of the Civil War was one Elmer Ellsworth, the first man killed on the Union side. Thousands of babies born during the two or three months following Ellsworth’s death were named “Elmer Ellsworth.” Knowing these facts, the “E.E.” in the man’s name meant much.

Do you have anyone in your family tree named Elmer Ellsworth?

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P.S. Did you know that today, April 12th, is the anniversary of the start of the Civil War? It’s also is the anniversary of the first manned space flight. These events occurred exactly 100 years apart, weirdly.