How popular is the baby name Viking 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 Viking.

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Popularity of the baby name Viking


Posts that mention the name Viking

Space age siblings: Spaceship, Viking-II, Fusion…

Krosuri Veera Raghava Chary of Andhra Pradesh, India, was both a space-lover and a devoted communist highly opposed to India’s caste system.

So he gave all five of his children, born from the 1960s to the 1980s, space-themed names that were so unconventional that they made it impossible to determine the family’s caste.

Here they are, in order:

  1. Spaceship (boy), named after the USSR’s first Soyuz spacecraft, launched in 1966.
  2. Viking-II (girl), named after the NASA spacecraft Viking 2, launched in 1975.
  3. Fusion (boy), whose name may have been inspired by the fact that “stars are powered by nuclear fusion in their cores.”
  4. Space Shuttle (boy), named after NASA’s Space Shuttle system, which began with test flights in 1981.
    • Space Shuttle later named one of his children, a boy, Space Shuttle Bulldozer.
  5. Space Shuttle Challenger (boy), named after NASA’s ill-fated Space Shuttle Challenger, launched in 1986.

Chary also named two of his grandchildren, Quasar and Sagan.

The Chary family reminds me of the Subatomic Particle Siblings. Its also reminds me of the babies named Skylab, Sputnik, and Antares.

Related question: What do you think the first space baby should be named?

Source: Samdani, MN. “To beat caste system, Communist leader named his children after spaceships, celestial bodies.” Times of India Sep. 19, 2015.

Approved and rejected baby names in Iceland

The recent news about the Icelandic girl named Blær reminds me…

Did you know that the Mannanafnanefnd, Iceland’s Personal Names Committee, puts its baby name rulings online? Every acceptance and rejection going back to 2001 is available.

One particularly interesting ruling is the split decision that happened in late 2008 over the name Skallagrímur, which was ultimately rejected.

But the Mannanafnanefnd’s rulings are in Icelandic, and if you don’t read Icelandic, well, they’re a bit hard to make out. :) So, to make it easier, here are current lists of Iceland’s approved and rejected baby names:

Over 1,700 boy names and over 1,800 girl names have been given the Iceland’s stamp of approval so far.

Sources: I ain’t the only one who loves names!, Icelandic Name Committee Reaches Rare Split Decision

Update, 7/9/14 – The government of Iceland now has a separate website for approved and rejected baby names. I’ve just updated all the links.