How popular is the baby name Vilas 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 Vilas.

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Popularity of the baby name Vilas


Posts that mention the name Vilas

What gave the baby name Belvin a boost in 1919?

American pilot Belvin W. Maynard (1892-1922)
Belvin Maynard

The Transcontinental Air Race of 1919 began began 100 years ago today, on October 8, 1919. It was the longest airplane race ever attempted (up to that point) and was followed closely by the public via the newspapers.

It even ended up having an influence on baby names: the boy name that saw the steepest rise in usage in 1919, Belvin, was the name of the winning pilot.

  • 1921 – 13 baby boys named Belvin
  • 1920 – 10 baby boys named Belvin
    • 5 in N.C. specifically
  • 1919 – 23 baby boys named Belvin [peak]
    • 6 in N.C. specifically
  • 1918 – 5 baby boys named Belvin
  • 1917 – 5 baby boys named Belvin

Belvin Womble Maynard was born in North Carolina in 1892. He’d gone to school to become a Baptist minister in the early 1910s, but ended up discovering an aptitude for piloting airplanes while stationed in France during WWI.

Not long after returning to the U.S. in the summer of 1919, Maynard entered and won an air race from Long Island, New York, to Toronto, Canada.

Following that success, the “flying parson” (as he’d been dubbed by the press) entered an even more ambitious air race: the Army Air Service’s “Transcontinental Reliability and Endurance Test.” It required that entrants cross the nation not once, but twice.

Sixty-three planes entered. Most of them (48) started in New York and headed west, while the rest (15) started in San Francisco and headed east.

Belvin Maynard, mechanic, dog, and airplane
Belvin is on the right.

Maynard, his mechanic, and his dog (Trixie) took off from New York at the start of the contest. They were the first to reach California, on October 11.

They stayed until the 15th, then headed back toward the East Coast. On the return trip their engine failed, which could have cost them the race…but they cleverly replaced it with the engine of a wrecked plane nearby (that had been participating in the very same race). They made it back to New York on October 18 and were declared the winners.

(As for the other entrants, only about half of them completed the race. In total there were 54 accidents and seven deaths.)

For a time, Belvin Maynard was a national hero. The first commercial airfield in North Carolina, which opened in December of 1919, was named “Maynard Field” in his honor.

But sadly, in mid-1922, several weeks before his 30th birthday, Belvin was killed when his plane crashed during an air show in Vermont.

What are your thoughts on the baby name Belvin?

Sources: Belvin W. Maynard – Early Aviators, Billy Mitchell and the Great Transcontinental Air Race of 1919, Belvin Maynard – NCpedia, International Aerial Derby 1919 – General Aviation News, Transcontinental Reliability and Endurance Test – National Museum of the U.S. Air Force, The Great Transcontinental Air Race – HistoryNet
Images: from the Morning Oregonian (11 Oct. 1919, page 5) and St. Nicholas magazine (Dec.1919, page 173)

[More aviator-inspired baby names: Vilas, Maitland, Lindbergh]

Mystery baby name: Wilba

Graph of the usage of the baby name Wilba in the U.S. since 1880
Usage of the baby name Wilba

In the early 1900s, the baby name Wilba popped up on the SSA’s baby name list for the first time:

  • 1915: 7 baby girls named Wilba
  • 1914: 7 baby girls named Wilba
  • 1913: 18 baby girls named Wilba [debut]
  • 1912: unlisted
  • 1911: unlisted

It was the top debut name of 1913, along with Vilas. But SSA numbers from the early 1900s aren’t too reliable, so let’s see how many Wilbas are in the Social Security Death Index (SSDI) for the same time period:

  • 1915: 8 people named Wilba
  • 1914: 7 people named Wilba
  • 1913: 32 people named Wilba
  • 1912: 3 people named Wilba
  • 1911: 4 people named Wilba

The SSA data shows that several wil- names were on the rise during these years, but this doesn’t explain the sudden appearance of Wilba.

Name19111912191319141915
Wilba1877
Wilberta7656
Wilbur (f)758
Wilda89137133177261
Willow6121123
Wilma9141241146917872773
Wilna99172318

Neither set of data shows a strong tie to any specific location, though the SSDI data suggests that Wilba was used more often in the south than in the north.

Any idea where this one could have come from?

How did Charles Lindbergh influence baby names in 1927?

Exactly 85 years ago today, 25-year-old Air Mail pilot Charles Lindbergh was in the middle of his non-stop, solo flight across the Atlantic Ocean.

His successful journey from New York City to Paris, which lasted from about 8 am on May 20 until about 10:30 pm on May 21, 1927, earned Lindbergh the $25,000 Orteig Prize and made him world-famous virtually overnight.

According to SSA data, hundreds of baby boys were named Lindbergh that year:

  • 1930: 31 baby boys named Lindbergh
  • 1929: 40 baby boys named Lindbergh
  • 1928: 71 baby boys named Lindbergh (rank: 771st)
  • 1927: 116 baby boys named Lindbergh (rank: 574th) [peak usage]
  • 1926: 12 baby boys named Lindbergh
  • 1925: 7 baby boys named Lindbergh [debut]
  • 1924: unlisted

Though the data makes it look like dozens of babies were named “Lindbergh” prior to May of 1927, that’s probably not the case. It’s much more likely that these babies simply remained nameless until the event occurred. (At that time it wasn’t uncommon for American parents to wait months, sometimes years, to settle on a name. Emancipation Proclamation Coggeshall wasn’t named until she was two and a half, for instance.)

Hundreds more got the diminutive form Lindy:

  • 1930: 64 baby boys named Lindy (rank: 813th)
  • 1929: 84 baby boys named Lindy (rank: 669th)
  • 1928: 177 baby boys named Lindy (rank: 454th)
  • 1927: 235 baby boys named Lindy (rank: 388th) [peak usage]
  • 1926: 29 baby boys named Lindy
  • 1925: 10 baby boys named Lindy
  • 1924: 6 baby boys named Lindy

I spotted a boy named Lindbergh Long in a mid-1932 issue of North Carolina Christian Advocate. His age wasn’t mentioned, but he was probably born circa 1927.

Photo of child named Lindbergh Long in the religious newspaper "North Carolina Christian Advocate" (1932).

The variant spellings Lindberg, Lindburgh and Lindburg also got a boost in 1927. The latter two debuted in the data that year, in fact.

And, of course, many babies were given the first-middle combo “Charles Lindbergh.” The following Charles Lindbergh babies made the news:

  • Charles Lindbergh, son of Mr. and Mrs. Horace E. Lindbergh of Cambridge, MA
  • Charles Lindbergh Bohannon, son of Mr. and Mrs. Bohannon of La Jolla, San Diego, CA
  • Charles Lindbergh Erickson, son of Mrs. and Mrs. Carl W. Erickson of Worcester, MA
  • Charles Lindbergh Hurley, son of Mr. and Mrs. Gordon Hurley of Sea Cliff, Long Island, NY

A few years later, in 1931, a Canadian baby who made headlines for being born in an airplane was also named after Lindbergh.

Sources:

  • “3 Babies Are Given Name of Air Ace.” Painesville Telegraph 23 May 1927: 1.
  • “New Born Baby Gets Lindbergh’s Name.” Border Cities Star [Windsor, Ontario, Canada] 23 May 1927: 14.
  • “San Diego Baby Is Named for Aviator.” Prescott Evening Courier 8 Jun. 1927: 1.

Images: Lindbergh Received the Distinguished Flying Cross, North Carolina Christian Advocate

P.S. Some other aviators I’ve written about: Jack Vilas, Belvin Maynard, Lester Maitland, Bessica Raiche, Turi Widerøe.

Where did the baby name Vilas come from in 1913?

American aviator Jack Vilas (1891-1976)
Jack Vilas

Back in 1913, at least two dozen baby boys in the U.S. were suddenly named Vilas, making Vilas the most popular debut name for baby boys that year:

  • 1915: 16 baby boys named Vilas
  • 1914: 13 baby boys (and 6 baby girls) named Vilas
  • 1913: 24 baby boys named Vilas [debut]
  • 1912: unlisted
  • 1911: unlisted

Many of these babies were born in Wisconsin specifically:

  • 1915: 8 babies named Vilas in Wisconsin
  • 1914: 7 babies named Vilas in Wisconsin
  • 1913: 10 babies named Vilas in Wisconsin
  • 1912: unlisted
  • 1911: unlisted

Data from the Social Security Death Index (which is more accurate than the SSA data for the late 1800s and early 1900s) shows the same 1913 spike and the same high usage in Wisconsin:

  • 1915: 25 people named Vilas (7 in WI, 2 in MI)
  • 1914: 27 people named Vilas (8 in WI, 2 in IL)
  • 1913: 45 people named Vilas (15 WI, 3 in IL)
  • 1912: 25 people named Vilas (13 WI, 1 in IL, 1 in MI)
  • 1911: 24 people named Vilas (8 in WI)

So what inspired the spike?

The spike was inspired by aviation pioneer Logan Archbold “Jack” Vilas. He purchased a hydro-aeroplane from Glenn Curtiss in the spring of 1913 and, while his plane was being built, went to flight school (for just four weeks!). Soon after that, Vilas became the first person to fly across Lake Michigan, traveling west from St. Joseph, Michigan, to Chicago, Illinois, in about an hour and a half on July 1, 1913.

But this doesn’t explain why Wisconsinites liked the name so much even before Jack Vilas came along.

It seems that people in the Badger State already had an affinity for the name Vilas thanks to a pair of Wisconsin politicians: Levi Vilas (1811-1879) and his son William Vilas (1840-1908).

Jack was actually a distant cousin of Levi and William. Their closest common ancestor was Noah Vilas, born in Massachusetts in 1733. Noah’s father Peter brought the surname over from England.

Sources:

Image: San Diego Air & Space Museum