How popular is the baby name William 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 William.

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Popularity of the baby name William


Posts that mention the name William

Popular baby names in Virginia, 2023

Flag of Virginia
Flag of Virginia

Last year, the Commonwealth of Virginia — which is home to more than 8.7 million people — welcomed roughly 95,000 babies.

What were the most popular names among these babies? Charlotte and Liam, according to the Virginia Department of Health’s Office of Vital Records.

Here are Virginia’s top 15 girl names and top 15 boy names of 2023:

Girl names

  1. Charlotte
  2. Emma
  3. Olivia*
  4. Sophia
  5. Amelia
  6. Evelyn
  7. Ava
  8. Isabella
  9. Elizabeth
  10. Mia
  11. Eleanor
  12. Harper
  13. Sofia
  14. Luna
  15. Abigail

*In the press release, Olivia was spelled “Oliva.” I’m assuming this was a typo.

Boy names

  1. Liam
  2. Noah
  3. James
  4. Oliver
  5. William
  6. Lucas
  7. Henry
  8. Theodore
  9. Benjamin
  10. Levi
  11. Elijah
  12. Luke
  13. John
  14. Michael
  15. Gabriel

The state also revealed the top names among the state’ four largest ethnic groups: White, Black, Hispanic and Asian. (According to the most recent CDC data, from 2021, 54.3% of Virginia’s babies were born to non-Hispanic White mothers, 20.0% to Black mothers, 15.7% to Hispanic mothers, and 7.3% to Asian mothers.)

These were the top 5 girl names and 5 boy names among Virginia’s White babies:

Girl names, WhiteBoy names, White
1. Charlotte
2. Olivia
3. Emma
4. Amelia
5. Sophia
1. James
2. William
3. Oliver
4. Henry
5. Liam

These were the top 5 girl names and 5 boy names among Virginia’s Black babies:

Girl names, BlackBoy names, Black
1. Ava
2. Naomi
3. Nova
4. Serenity
5. Autumn
1. Noah
2. Amir
3. Josiah
4. Elijah
5. Legend

These were the top 5 girl names and 5 boy names among Virginia’s Hispanic babies:

Girl names, HispanicBoy names, Hispanic
1. Mia
2. Camila*
3. Genesis*
4. Isabella
5. Sofia
1. Liam
2. Mateo
3. Dylan
4. Thiago
5. Lucas

*In the press release, Camila and Genesis were spelled “Camilla” and “Genisis.” I’m assuming these were typos as well.

And, finally, these were the top 5 girl names and 5 boy names among Virginia’s Asian babies:

Girl names, AsianBoy names, Asian
1. Olivia
2. Ava
3. Sophia
4. Sophie
5. Charlotte
1. Noah
2. Lucas
3. Muhammad
4. Ethan
5. Alexander

Here’s a link to Virginia’s 2022 rankings, if you’d like to compare last year to the year before.

Sources:

Image: Adapted from Flag of Virginia (public domain)

Popular baby names on Nantucket, 2023

Flag of Massachusetts
Flag of Massachusetts

The Massachusetts island of Nantucket, which sits about 30 miles off the coast Cape Cod, is home to over 14,000 year-round residents (though the population “swells to around 80,000 or more” during July and August).

According to the Nantucket Town Clerk’s office, a total of 158 babies were born on the island in 2023. But we only have access to the names of 108 of these babies. Why?

[B]ecause of a Massachusetts law that separates birth certificates based on the parent’s marital status. If the parents were not married at the time of the birth or the father is not named on the record, the birth certificate is considered a restricted record and is not public.

So, out of the 108 known names, which were the most popular? For girls it was a tie between Leah and Sarah (given to two babies each), and for boys it was a tie between Grayson and Lucas (also given to two babies each).

The 100 other babies were given 100 single-use names:

Archibald, Abigail, Abraham, Alejandro, Alister, Alyssa, Alvaro, Amina, Andrew, Asher, Aurora, Bayard, Beckett, Benjaminas, Brenda, Callan, Carter, Catherine, Cameron, Charlotte, Christiaan, Colin, Cole, Cooper, Curren, Damien, Daniel, Debora, Eden, Edwin, Edward, Emilia, Emma, Enzo, Evelyn, Ezra, Fabian, Fae, Fiona, Gaby, Gabriella, Greydon, Griffyn, Harbor, Henry, Israel, Jacob, Jaden, James, Jantyah, Jefferson, Joshua, Julie, Justina, Kairi, Kiara, Lakelyn, La’Klia, Larkin, Latifa, Leon, Liv, Luna, Lydia, Mabel, Madison, Marianne, Marlow, Matheus, Maverick, Max, Mia, Mila, Milo, Miles, Mukhammadyusuf, Nia, Penelope, Quinn, River, Robin, Roman, Samir, Scarlett, Sergio, Shay, Shepard, Silverio, Skye, Stephanie, Sullivan, Theodore, Therdore, Tiller, Timothy, Wilder, William, Yasna, Yvonne, Zaniyah

Tiller caught my eye — it may have come from the English surname (which originally referred to someone who tilled the soil), but, given the location, I’m hoping it was inspired by the tiller of a boat. Maybe Tiller will become the boaters’ version of Taylor/Tyler? :)

Olivia and Liam — the top names in Boston last year — are nowhere to be found on Nantucket’s list, interestingly.

Sources:

Image: Adapted from Flag of Massachusetts (public domain)

Popular baby names in Boston (Massachusetts), 2023

Flag of Massachusetts
Flag of Massachusetts

Last year, the City of Boston welcomed a total of 20,645 babies.

What were the most popular names among these babies? Olivia and Liam.

Here are Boston’s top 20 girl names and top 20 boy names of 2023:

Girl names

  1. Olivia
  2. Emma
  3. Sophia
  4. Charlotte
  5. Sofia
  6. Isabella
  7. Grace
  8. Chloe
  9. Amelia
  10. Maya
  11. Luna
  12. Gianna
  13. Mia
  14. Nora
  15. Ava
  16. Natalie
  17. Ella
  18. Emilia
  19. Maeve
  20. Eleanor

Boy names

  1. Liam
  2. Noah
  3. Henry
  4. Leo
  5. Theodore
  6. Jack
  7. Julian
  8. James
  9. Thomas
  10. Benjamin
  11. William
  12. Luca
  13. John
  14. Ethan
  15. Logan
  16. Aiden
  17. Charles
  18. Samuel
  19. Joseph
  20. Oliver

Thomas caught my eye — it’s a top-10 boy name in Boston, but (in 2022) it only managed to rank 22nd state-wide and 45th country-wide.

Massachusetts’ top baby names of 2023 won’t be revealed until May, when the new SSA data comes out, but the state’s #1 names in 2022 were Olivia and Noah. (Noah won by a wide margin, in fact. It was given to 142 more baby boys than second-place Liam.)

Sources: Most Popular Baby Names in Boston, SSA

Image: Adapted from Flag of Massachusetts (public domain)

What gave the baby name Kermit a boost in 1901?

Presidential son Kermit Roosevelt (1889-1943)
Kermit Roosevelt (in 1902)

In November of 1900, Republican William McKinley defeated Democrat William Jennings Bryan in the U.S. presidential election.

In September of 1901, less than a year later, President McKinley was assassinated and succeeded by his vice president, Theodore Roosevelt.

Roosevelt’s second son, Kermit, had turned 11 a month before the election, and was still 11 when his father became president of the United States.

His rare first name, Kermit, debuted in the U.S. baby name data in 1900 and saw a sizeable boost in usage the very next year. In fact, Kermit was the fastest-rising baby name of 1901 (in terms of relative increase).

  • 1903: 12 baby boys named Kermit [rank: 679th]
  • 1902: 16 baby boys named Kermit [rank: 547th]
  • 1901: 17 baby boys named Kermit [rank: 481st]
  • 1900: 6 baby boys named Kermit
  • 1899: unlisted
  • 1898: unlisted

The earliest decades of the SSA data tend to under-count actual usage, so, for comparison, here’s data from the Social Security Death Index (SSDI) for the same period of time:

  • 1903: 107 people with the first name Kermit
  • 1902: 118 people with the first name Kermit
  • 1901: 64 people with the first name Kermit
  • 1900: 12 people with the first name Kermit
  • 1899: 1 person
  • 1898: 2 people

But there’s more to the story than that, because later spikes in the name’s usage also seem to line up with events in Kermit Roosevelt’s life.

Graph of the usage of the baby name Kermit in the U.S. since 1880
Usage of the baby name Kermit (SSA data)

From March 1909 to June 1910, Kermit accompanied his father on an expedition to Africa. Various photos of Kermit (including the one below) ran in the newspapers both before and during the trip. The SSA data indicates that the name ranked 175th and 193rd, respectively, in 1909 and 1910 — the only two times it’s ever placed inside the boys’ top 200.

Kermit Roosevelt's photo in a newspaper (Sept. 1908)
Newspaper photo of Kermit (Sept. 1908)

In June of 1914, Kermit married Belle Wyatt Willard, the daughter of the U.S. Ambassador to Spain. (Kermit and his father had also just returned from a perilous five-month trip to the Amazon basin, but the newspapers didn’t seem as interested in the second expedition as they were in the wedding.) The same year, the name nearly doubled in usage.

In July of 1918, Kermit’s youngest brother, Quentin, was killed in combat during WWI. Months later, in January of 1919, his famous father died suddenly in his sleep. The name Kermit saw a steep rise in usage in 1918, followed by peak usage (in terms of absolute numbers of babies) in 1919.

(Incidentally, dozens of baby boys were named either “Quentin Kermit” or, more often, “Kermit Quentin” during the first decades of the 1900s. One example: Kermit Quentin Turner, born in Oklahoma in 1919.)

For seven months during 1925, Kermit and his eldest brother, Ted, went on an expedition to the Himalayas. The newspapers (again) seemed only moderately interested in the trip, but the name Kermit did see slightly higher usage in the mid-1920s.

And it saw another uptick in 1943, the year that Kermit Roosevelt — who, during the 1930s, had been hit hard by the Great Depression and also became an alcoholic — committed suicide in Alaska after being medically discharged from the U.S. Army.

Kermit’s name — which was also the middle name of his mother, Edith Kermit Carow — ultimately honored Edith’s uncle, merchant and shipowner Robert Kermit.

The surname Kermit is an Anglicized form of the Manx surname Kermode, which in turn is a form of the Irish surname Mac Diarmada. The Irish surname is derived from the Irish personal name Diarmaid, which is of unknown etymology.

What are your thoughts on the name Kermit?

Sources:

Images: Kermit Roosevelt and Jack, the dog (LOC); “Kermit Roosevelt” in the Warren Sheaf (Sept. 3, 1908)