How popular is the baby name Tom 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 Tom.

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Popularity of the baby name Tom


Posts that mention the name Tom

Popular baby names in Ireland, 2023

Flag of Ireland
Flag of Ireland

Last year, the Republic of Ireland — which covers five-sixths of the island of Ireland — welcomed roughly 55,000 babies.

What were the most popular names among these babies? Grace and Jack.

Here are Ireland’s top 50 girl names and top 50 boy names of 2023:

Girl Names

  1. Grace, 339 baby girls
  2. Fiadh (pronounced FEE-a), 300
  3. Emily, 297
  4. Sophie, 283
  5. Lily, 270
  6. Ellie, 252
  7. Mia, 242
  8. Amelia, 241 (tie)
  9. Éabha (pronounced EY-va), 241 (tie)
  10. Ella, 231
  11. Isla, 227
  12. Hannah, 226
  13. Sophia, 218
  14. Lucy, 214
  15. Ava, 207
  16. Sadie, 200
  17. Olivia, 199
  18. Freya, 188
  19. Emma, 183
  20. Chloe, 181
  21. Robyn, 180
  22. Molly, 176
  23. Anna, 166 (tie)
  24. Croía (pronounced KREE-a), 166 (tie)
  25. Evie, 165
  26. Caoimhe (pronounced KEE-va or KWEE-va), 158
  27. Saoirse (pronounced SEER-sha or SAYR-sha), 157 (tie)
  28. Cara, 157 (tie)
  29. Sofia, 156
  30. Millie, 150
  31. Aoife (pronounced EE-fa), 148
  32. Isabelle, 132
  33. Bonnie, 130
  34. Maya, 128 (tie)
  35. Ada, 128 (tie)
  36. Róisín (pronounced ROH-sheen), 127
  37. Ruby, 126
  38. Kate, 123 (tie)
  39. Alice, 123 (tie)
  40. Holly, 120 (3-way tie)
  41. Erin, 120 (3-way tie)
  42. Sadhbh (pronounced siev; rhymes with “5”), 120 (3-way tie)
  43. Leah, 119
  44. Isabella, 118 (3-way tie)
  45. Ailbhe (pronounced AL-va), 118 (3-way tie)
  46. Méabh (pronounced mayv), 118 (3-way tie)
  47. Zoe, 115
  48. Annie, 112
  49. Ivy, 111
  50. Willow, 110

Boy Names

  1. Jack, 561 baby boys
  2. Noah, 473
  3. James, 369
  4. Rían (pronounced REE-an), 339
  5. Oisín (pronounced UH-sheen or OH-sheen), 330
  6. Fionn (pronounced fyun or fyoon), 306
  7. Tadhg (pronounced tieg, like the first part of “tiger”), 301
  8. Liam, 289
  9. Cillian (pronounced KIL-ee-an), 275
  10. Daniel, 256
  11. Finn, 251
  12. Conor, 244 (tie)
  13. Charlie, 244 (tie)
  14. Seán (pronounced shawn), 240
  15. Michael, 239
  16. Leo, 237
  17. Theo, 233
  18. Thomas, 227
  19. Patrick, 221
  20. Luke, 215
  21. Tommy, 214
  22. Oliver, 211
  23. Adam, 201
  24. Harry, 198
  25. Luca, 197
  26. Darragh, 195
  27. Alex, 175
  28. Bobby, 157
  29. Cian (pronounced KEE-an or keen), 156
  30. Oscar, 154
  31. John, 152 (tie)
  32. Max, 152 (tie)
  33. Ryan, 151
  34. Páidí (pronounced PAW-dee), 150
  35. Jamie, 149
  36. Ben, 147
  37. Kai, 141 (tie)
  38. Ollie, 141 (tie)
  39. Tom, 135
  40. Matthew, 134
  41. Dylan, 132
  42. Callum, 131
  43. Sonny, 130
  44. Sam, 129
  45. Ethan, 127 (tie)
  46. Alfie, 127 (tie)
  47. David, 122
  48. Alexander, 118
  49. Mason, 116
  50. Caelan, 114

New to the girls’ top 100 were Lucia, Cadhla (pronounced KIE-la) and Síofra (pronounced SHEE-fra).

New to the boys’ top 100 were Caelan, Jude, Paddy, Éanna (pronounced EY-na) and Dáithí (pronounced DAH-hee).

The fastest-rising names in the top 100 in terms of numbers of babies were:

  • Éala (increased by 41 baby girls), Ailbhe (+40), Méabh (+36), Zara (+33), Croía (+26)
  • Caelan (increased by 58 baby boys), Páidí (+41), Arlo (+35), Tommy (+30), Mark (+28)

And the fastest-rising names in terms of rank were:

  • Síofra (rose 57 spots on the girls’ list), Lucia (+43), Éala (+38), Lottie (+36), Zara (+31)
  • Caelan (rose 58 spots on the boys’ list), Mark (+46), Ruairí (+41), Eoin (+37), Arlo (+31)
Map of the four provinces of Ireland
Ireland’s four provinces

Home to more than five million people, the Republic of Ireland is divided into four provinces. (One of these provinces, Ulster, lies largely within Northern Ireland, which is part of the UK.) The top baby names within each of the four provinces last year were…

Top Girl NameTop Boy Name
Leinster
(56% of the population)
GraceJack
Munster
(27% of pop.)
GraceJack
Connacht
(11% of pop.)
FiadhJack
Ulster [ROI portion]
(6% of pop.)
LilyJack

And what about the baby names at the other end of the spectrum?

Here’s a selection of the names that were given to just 3 babies each in Ireland last year:

Rare Girl NamesRare Boy Names
Adara, Brídín, Cushla, Dottie, Eilidh, Féile, Gillian, Hezlin, Iona, Jolene, Kalina, Lorna, Maliha, Natasha, Ocean, Philomena, Ríonach, Saffie, Tuiren, Vedika, Yasmine, ZadieAlby, Bram, Conal, Douglas, Elvis, Finnian, Gerald, Igor, Jonnie, Keenan, Lughaidh, Maitiú, Nathanael, Orin, Patryk, Rylan, Séadhna, Téidí, Ultán, Viktor, Wren, Yohan, Zachariah

Finally, here are Ireland’s 2022 rankings, if you’d like to compare last year to the year before.

Sources: Irish Babies’ Names – CSO (Irish Babies’ Names 2023), Births, Deaths and Marriages – CSO, Provinces of Ireland – Wikipedia

Image: Adapted from Flag of Ireland (public domain)
Map: Adapted from Provinces of Ireland location map by Ssolbergj under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Tom Morello named his baby after Randy Rhoads

Guitarist Randy Rhoads (1956-1982)
Randy Rhoads

Classically-trained heavy metal guitarist Randall “Randy” Rhoads is best remembered for his work with Ozzy Osbourne in the early 1980s. (You can hear him playing on “Crazy Train.”) Though he didn’t live long — he died in 1982, while on tour — his small but impressive body of work influenced a number of future rock guitarists.

One of those guitarists was Tom Morello of Rage Against the Machine. Here’s what Morello told Rolling Stone a few years ago:

Randy Rhoads is my favorite guitar player of all time. It was his poster on my wall when I was practicing eight hours a day, and I named my firstborn son, Rhoads, after him.

Baby Rhoads was born in 2007.

Morello and his wife Denise welcomed their second son in 2011. This time they went for a sports name, choosing Roman in honor of 1960’s Los Angeles Rams quarterback Roman Gabriel. Again, Morello explained the decision in terms of posters:

That was the poster on my wall. Before I had rock and roll posters on my wall I had Roman Gabriel on my wall.

Which name do you like more, Rhoads or Roman?

Sources:

Image: Screenshot of a performance with Ozzy Osbourne [vid]

Popular baby names in France, 2022

Flag of France
Flag of France

The country of France — which was the most populous country in Europe from the Middle Ages until the early 19th century, and still ranks within the top five today — shares land borders with eight other countries: Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, Monaco, Andorra, and Spain.

Last year, France welcomed about 723,000 babies.

What were the most popular names among these babies? Jade (pronounced zhahd) and Gabriel.

Here are France’s top 50 girl names and top 50 boy names of 2022:

Girl Names

  1. Jade, 3,420 baby girls
  2. Louise, 3,412
  3. Ambre, 3,380
  4. Alba, 3,280
  5. Emma, 3,158
  6. Rose, 2,692
  7. Alice, 2,520
  8. Romy, 2,409
  9. Anna, 2,380
  10. Lina, 2,355
  11. Léna, 2,266
  12. Mia, 2,173
  13. Lou, 2,114
  14. Julia, 2,056
  15. Chloé, 2,004
  16. Alma, 1,974
  17. Agathe, 1,958
  18. Iris, 1,904
  19. Inaya, 1,875
  20. Charlie, 1,834
  21. Juliette, 1,802
  22. Léa, 1,791
  23. Victoire, 1,772
  24. Luna, 1,751
  25. Giulia, 1,745
  26. Adèle, 1,718
  27. Jeanne, 1,699
  28. Nina, 1,669
  29. Eva, 1,630
  30. Olivia, 1,546
  31. Zoé, 1,523
  32. Léonie, 1,511
  33. Romane, 1,481
  34. Victoria, 1,452
  35. Nour, 1,372
  36. Inès, 1,284 (tie)
  37. Lya, 1,284 (tie)
  38. Lucie, 1,261
  39. Lyana, 1,235
  40. Lola, 1,205
  41. Alix, 1,182
  42. Charlotte, 1,176
  43. Mila, 1,173
  44. Sofia, 1,168
  45. Louna, 1,163
  46. Ava, 1,153 (tie)
  47. Margaux, 1,153 (tie)
  48. Elena, 1,149
  49. Emy, 1,118
  50. Mya, 1,115

Boy Names

  1. Gabriel, 4,889 baby boys
  2. Léo, 4,078
  3. Raphaël, 3,798
  4. Maël, 3,571
  5. Louis, 3,560
  6. Noah, 3,325
  7. Jules, 3,308
  8. Arthur, 3,284
  9. Adam, 3,212
  10. Lucas, 2,774
  11. Liam, 2,715
  12. Sacha, 2,613
  13. Isaac, 2,590
  14. Gabin, 2,561
  15. Eden, 2,460
  16. Hugo, 2,447
  17. Naël, 2,325
  18. Aaron, 2,287
  19. Mohamed, 2,237
  20. Léon, 2,203
  21. Paul, 2,200
  22. Noé, 2,154
  23. Marceau, 1,970
  24. Ethan, 1,963
  25. Nathan, 1,899
  26. Théo, 1,872
  27. Tom, 1,843
  28. Nino, 1,825
  29. Marius, 1,751
  30. Ayden, 1,717
  31. Malo, 1,715
  32. Mathis, 1,636
  33. Gaspard, 1,606
  34. Martin, 1,559
  35. Lyam, 1,549
  36. Victor, 1,537
  37. Rayan, 1,484
  38. Elio, 1,432
  39. Timéo, 1,424
  40. Eliott, 1,420
  41. Milo, 1,416
  42. Robin, 1,393
  43. Tiago, 1,383
  44. Valentin, 1,378
  45. Ibrahim, 1,359
  46. Axel, 1,350
  47. Augustin, 1,317
  48. Amir, 1,305
  49. Enzo, 1,270
  50. Imran, 1,246

The girls’ top 100 included Alya (53rd), Diane (81st), Maddy (90th), and Suzanne (97th).

The boys’ top 100 included Camille (61st), Mahé (66th), Basile (78th), and Andrea (91st).

Charlie is still rising on the girls’ side — which could explain why the parents of baby boys slightly prefer the spelling Charly (73rd) over the spelling Charlie (80th) these days.

In the capital city of Paris last year, the top boy name was also Gabriel, but the top girl name was Alma instead of Jade. (Jade was tied with Léa for 10th/11th place in Paris.)

Finally, here are France’s 2021 rankings, if you’d like to compare last year to the year before.

Sources: Classement des prénoms en France depuis 1900 – Insee, Demographic report 2022 – Insee, Demographics of France – Wikipedia

Image: Adapted from Flag of France (public domain)

Name quotes #120: Abba, Barbara, Clementa

double quotation mark

Here’s the latest batch of name-related quotes…

A name story from the recent Washington Post article “What’s in a name?” by John Kelly:

When Barbara Zigli was young, she never bothered to ask her parents why they named her Barbara. Much later, she learned that Saint Barbara is the patron saint of miners.

“My mother’s father was a coal miner, so I asked her if that was why they named me Barbara,” wrote Barbara, of Arlington.

There was a long pause, then Barbara’s mother said, “Uh, yeah, that’s it.”

Barbara was immediately suspicious. “No, really, mom,” she demanded. “Why did you name me Barbara?”

“Promise me you won’t get mad,” Barbara’s mother said. “You’re named after Miss Barbara on [the TV show] ‘Romper Room.'”

From a 2012 article about Woody Guthrie’s son Joady in the Mercury News:

Joady Guthrie was named for Tom Joad, the hero of John Steinbeck’s novel “The Grapes of Wrath,” because his father, himself a political activist and an Oklahoman, or “Okie,” was sympathetic to the plight of 1930s farmers of the Great Depression. Many of Woody Guthrie’s songs championed Dust Bowl migrant workers and working people.

From the 2015 obituary of Rev. Clementa C. Pinckney in the New York Times:

Mr. Pinckney’s late mother, Theopia Stevenson Aikens, was a baseball fan who named her son after Roberto Clemente, the Pittsburgh Pirates All-Star, who had died in a plane crash seven months earlier while delivering aid to earthquake victims in Nicaragua, family members said. His last name, one of the most storied in South Carolina politics, is that of a pair of white slaveholding cousins who signed the United States Constitution.

From a 2004 New York Times article about Denmark’s Law on Personal Names (which was originally put in place to force the Danes to use family surnames instead of patronymics):

Then in the 1960’s, a furor erupted over the first name Tessa, which resembled tisse, which means to urinate in Danish. Distressed over the lack of direction in the law, the Danish government expanded the statute to grapple with first names. Now the law is as long as an average-size book.

From a recent article in the Mirror about a woman named Abba after Swedish supergroup Abba:

When I was a child, everyone would question my name and make comments about it. They’d get confused by how it’s spelt – it’s the same as the band.

I’ve never come across anyone else named Abba and I love how unique it is. I always get asked ‘Abba like the band?’ when I say it.

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