How popular is the baby name Wilfred 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 Wilfred.
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Tuesday’s post about the Victorian-style Tylney Hall Hotel reminded me of a list of Victorian-era names that I’ve had bookmarked forever.
The list was created by amateur genealogist G. M. Atwater as a resource for writers. It contains names and name combinations that were commonly seen in the U.S. from the 1840s to the 1890s. Below is the full list (with a few minor changes).
| Victorian Era Female Names | Victorian Era Male Names |
|---|---|
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Which female name and male name do you like best?
On October 11, 1933, a baby boy was born in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, to Mr. and Mrs. Charles E. Elder.
He was born while the family was listening to a radio broadcast featuring Canada’s first country music star, Wilfred Carter, “the yodeling cowboy.”
And so what was the baby named? Wilfred Charles Elder.
Mrs. Elder wrote a letter to Wilf Carter to let him know about her son’s name. Here’s an excerpt:
We listen to your program every night and we surely do enjoy them and wish they were longer. On October 11, while all the rest in the house were listening to your delightful singing I gave birth to a lovely nine-pound boy and it was suggested then that we should name him after you and so we did and I only hope that when he grows up he will be as talented as you.
What does the name Wilfred mean?
It’s the modern version of the Old English name Wilfrith (or Wilfrið), which is made up of the elements wil, meaning “will” or “desire,” and frið, meaning “peace.” Other Anglo-Saxon names with “frith” as a second element include Alfrith, Ingifrith, Ketilfrith and Osfrith. (These are male and female names listed in the Domesday book.)
In the U.S., the baby name Wilfred was most popular in the 1910s and 1920s.
Sources:
I listed all the female names in the Domesday Book a while back, so today I thought I’d complete the project by listing all the male names.
The male names below appeared in the Open Domesday database just once, except where noted. (For the record, I overlooked entries in which one person’s name was used to refer to another person, e.g., “Aelfric’s uncle.”)
The most-mentioned name within each letter group is in bold.
If you make it all the way to the bottom, your reward is a top ten list. :)
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
O
P
Q
R
S
T
U
V
W
Y
And now it’s time for the…
Which male were mentioned most often in the Domesday book? The #1 name was William, followed by Robert and Ralph:
Though the names in the book aren’t necessarily representative of name usage in England overall, it does make sense than William took the top spot. The Domesday Book was created a couple of decades after the Norman Conquest, at a time when the name William was very fashionable, thanks to William the Conqueror.
Image: Domesday Book for Warwickshire (public domain)
A reader named Sam sent me a great question several days ago:
I remember my late great-grandfather very fondly and have been thinking about passing on his name as a middle name for a son. However, there’s one catch: his name was Wilbrod, and I don’t know a thing about the name. I’ve never met any other Wilbrods, and what little I’ve been able to dig up is that it’s the name of a street in Ottawa and a rare but not entirely unheard of first and last name in certain francophone groups (historically) and in East Africa (currently). My great-grandfather was himself Canadian, of predominantly Ojibwe and partly either French or Belgian heritage. I’d love to know a little about the name’s history and meaning, if you have any information about it.
I can see why this one would be hard to research. Not only is it rare, but the historical figure who popularized it goes by a different spelling.
The name Wilbrod can be traced back to St. Willibrord (658-739), an Anglo-Saxon missionary who became the first Bishop of Utrecht in 695. Today he’s considered the patron saint of the Netherlands and Luxembourg.
According to one source, “Wilbrod” is a specifically French form of the name. Other forms include Wilbrord, Wilebrode, Wilibrord, Willbrord, Willebrode and Willibrode.
What does it mean?
Well, like many Germanic names, it contains two elements.
The first element comes from the word willa, meaning “will, wish, desire.” We can see this element in various Anglo-Saxon words, such as:
We can also identify it in several modern names/surnames, including:
The second element in Willibrord is the word brord, meaning “a prick or point, a lance, javelin, the first blade or spire of grass or corn.”
Though it’s tempting to merge the definitions of the two elements into a phrase like “desired lance,” it may be more accurate not to, as compound Germanic names were not always constructed with meaning in mind. Name elements were sometimes simply passed down from one generation to the next, for instance. (The first part of St. Willibrord’s name likely came from the name of his father, Wilgils.)
P.S. Wilbrod Street in the Sandy Hill district of Ottawa was named for one of the sons of former landowner Louis-Théodore Besserer.
Sources:
Image: Adapted from Echternach Statue Willibrord by Palauenc05 under CC BY-SA 4.0.
