How popular is the baby name Abcde 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 Abcde.

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Popularity of the baby name Abcde


Posts that mention the name Abcde

First name data from the 2020 U.S. Census

U.S. Census 2020
U.S. Census 2020

The U.S. Census Bureau recently released data on the most common first names reported in the 2020 Census.

The full set of data, which contains 5.2 million first names, covers 302 million people (91.1% of the enumerated population). The portion of the data released to the public features more than 53,000 names — every name that belonged to at least 100 people.

Impressively, the top 25 names each belonged to more than 1 million (!) people:

  1. Michael (3.5 million)
  2. John (3.1)
  3. James (3.0)
  4. David (2.8)
  5. Robert (2.8)
  6. William (2.2)
  7. Mary (1.8)
  8. Maria (1.7)
  9. Daniel (1.6)
  10. Joseph (1.6)
  11. Richard (1.6)
  12. Thomas (1.5)
  13. Christopher (1.5)
  14. Jennifer (1.3)
  15. Matthew (1.3)
  16. Jose (1.2)
  17. Charles (1.2)
  18. Elizabeth (1.2)
  19. Patricia (1.2)
  20. Linda (1.2)
  21. Mark (1.1)
  22. Andrew (1.1)
  23. Anthony (1.1)
  24. Kevin (1.0)
  25. Brian (1.0)

Within the top 1,000, the most “predominantly male” and “predominantly female” names were Kurt and Kathleen, respectively. The name that came closest to a 50-50 split (between male and female) was Harley. And the names that had the “highest shares of identification with” particular racial/ethnic groups were…

White
(non-Hispanic)		1. Beth, 95.0% white
2. Jill, 93.7%
3. Scott, 93.2%
4. Doug, 92.8%
5. Kathleen, 92.7%
Black or African American
(non-Hispanic)		1. Tyrone, 81.7% Black
2. Willie, 79.9%
3. Reginald, 77.9%
4. Maurice, 60.0%
5. Terrance, 56.0%
Asian, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander
(non-Hispanic)		1. Mohammad, 56.9% Asian/Islander
2. Mohammed, 47.9%
3. Son, 24.7%
4. Andy, 21.0%
5. Jenny, 20.7%
American Indian and Alaska Native
(non-Hispanic)		1. Cheyenne, 3.2% Native American
2. Dakota, 2.5%
3. Vernon, 2.0%
4. Harley, 1.9%
5. Donovan, 1.8%
Two or more races
(non-Hispanic)		1. Kai, 19.5% multi-racial
2. Aaliyah, 12.3%
3. Nevaeh, 12.0%
4. Mya, 11.3%
5. Maya, 11.2%
Hispanic or Latino1. Guadalupe, 98.5% Hispanic
2. Blanca, 98.4%
3. Mayra, 97.8%
4. Yesenia, 97.8%
5. Juana, 97.3%

And what about the rest of the names?

I haven’t looked at every single one (yet!), but I did scan thousands of the rarest. I spotted…

  • Arabic names like Boutros and Taoufik,
  • Armenian names like Vartouhi and Mesrop,
  • Bosnian names like Avdo and Hatidza,
  • Brazilian names like Elenilson and Moacir,
  • Dutch names like Geert and Leendert,
  • Cambodian names like Sokhoeun and Sreymom,
  • Ethiopian names like Fikre and Tesfai,
  • Filipino names like Liwanag and Rizalito,
  • Greek names like Afroditi and Kyriacos,
  • German names like Edeltraut and Albrecht,
  • Hungarian names like Zsuzsa and Gyongyi,
  • Indian names like Nagaraja and Tarannum,
  • Italian names like Guglielmo and Pierluigi,
  • Finnish names like Pirkko and Heikki,
  • Japanese names like Hidenori and Kazuaki,
  • Korean names like Sooji and Hyeong,
  • Lithuanian names like Algimantas and Gintaras,
  • Laotian names like Khamphay and Bounpheng,
  • Persian names like Morvarid and Rouzbeh,
  • Russian names like Pyotr and Genrikh,
  • Spanish names like Salustiano and Reveriano,
  • Serbian names like Ljubisa and Djuro,
  • Thai names like Chatchai and Waraporn,
  • Tibetan names like Tseten and Phuntsok,
  • Turkish names like Songul and Nevzat, and
  • Vietnamese names like Ngoi and Ngot.

(None of the above have ever popped up in the SSA data.)

I also noticed Utahna, Quisqueya, Littlejohn, and Garibaldi.

One that I did not see, however, was Abcde — a real name has been given to hundreds of U.S. babies since the 1990s. I looked this one up specifically because the Census Bureau stated in its methodology section that it had deleted “many obvious nonnames such as ABCDEFG, ADULT FEMALE, DONT KNOW, and NO NOMBRE.” I wonder if Abcde wasn’t mistakenly omitted…?

Sources:

Image: Adapted from US Census 2020 tools of the trade by Daniel Case under CC BY-SA 4.0.

The Latest on ABCDE

In late November, the baby name Abcde (pronounced AB-sih-dee) made national headlines after a 5-year-old El Paso girl named Abcde Redford was name-shamed by a Southwest Airlines gate agent at John Wayne Airport in Orange County.

My original post on Abcde was written way back in 2010, so now that the name is being highlighted in the news (and on social media), it’s time for an update!

Here’s a graph of what the usage looks like so far:

usage of the baby name Abcde, graph, 1990s, 2000s, 2010s, texas, hawaii, usa

And here are the grand totals (1990-2017):

  • Usage in the U.S.: at least 373 baby girls
    • Usage in Texas specifically: at least 225 baby girls
    • Usage in Hawaii specifically: at least 5 baby girls

(The state-specific SSA data, just like the national SSA data, has a five-baby threshold. So if a name is given to four (or fewer) babies in a certain state in a given year, that usage won’t be reported. The total counts, therefore, should be seen as minimums.)

Strangely, several sources (Vocativ, WaPo) keep repeating the claim that the name Abcde is “a primarily Hawaiian phenomenon.” While Hawaii was clearly an early adopter, Texas is where about 60% of all Abcdes have been born.

Oh, and we shouldn’t forget to mention the phonetic variant, Absidy:

usage of the baby name Absidy, graph, 1990s, 2000s, 2010s, texas, usa

It’s interesting to note that Abcde is not a purely modern invention. Here’s a 19th-century woman named Abcde, for instance (discovered by It’s an Urban Legend). Abcde is also not the only letter-string personal name we have evidence of. And, going beyond names, there’s the letter-based Latin word abecedarius, “alphabetical,” and derived terms like abecedary and abecedarian (thank you to Frank for reminding me of this).

So now here’s the big question: Abcde’s usage has been petering out over the last few years…but will all this recent exposure, despite the mocking tone, end up giving the name a boost in 2018/2019?

Sources: SSA, OC Southwest gate agent mocks 5-year-old girl’s name, posts boarding pass on social media

Abe & Abi: “Always be” baby names

Always be closing
“A, always. B, be. C, closing. Always be closing!”

Acronym baby names are officially a thing. Not a major thing, but still a thing. Acronym baby names I’ve come across include Ily, “I love you,” and Lya, “love you always.”

One type of acronym that seems to be trendy in general these days is the “AB_” acronym, in which the first two words are “always be” and the third is a verb in “-ing” form. They stem from ABC, “always be closing,” made famous by the movie Glengarry Glen Ross (1992). Variations I’ve heard include ABS (“always be shipping” or “always be “selling”), ABL (“always be learning”), a different ABC (“always be charging”), and even ABK (“always be knolling“).

So I wondered: Could we create an “always be” acronym that’s also a good baby name?

For the name to be pronounceable (unlike Abcde) the third letter would have to be a vowel. And I’d say the best vowels for the job — considering both the number of available verbs and the resulting acronym — are E and I. So let’s see what we can come up with for ABE and ABI…

ABE

Abe is typically a nickname for of Abraham, but Abe is also used as an independent name. In fact, dozens of U.S. babies have been named Abe (not Abraham) every year for many decades.

Here are my top five acronym possibilities for the name Abe:

  • ABE: “always be exploring”
  • ABE: “always be evolving”
  • ABE: “always be experimenting”
  • ABE: “always be embarking”
  • ABE: “always be excelling”

And here are some of the other verbs that could be used: earning, educating, empowering, encouraging, engaging, engineering, enhancing, enjoying, evaluating, examining, exceeding, and experiencing.

ABI

Abi, like the more familiar Abby, is a short form of Abigail. Abi isn’t common as an independent name, but usage has picked up a bit recently.

Here are my top five acronym possibilities for the name Abi:

  • ABI: “always be imagining”
  • ABI: “always be innovating”
  • ABI: “always be improving”
  • ABI: “always be inspiring”
  • ABI: “always be initiating”

And here are some of the other verbs that could be used: illuminating, implementing, impressing, improvising, increasing, influencing, informing, inspecting, integrating, interacting, interpreting, and investigating.

What are your favorite “always be” acronyms for Abe and Abi?

Do you think anyone out there has used an “always be” acronym as a baby name yet?

Alphabet soup baby names: ABC to XYZ

Last year, I asked if ABCDE really was a baby name. It is, but it’s not the only alphabet-based baby name out there. Here are some others…

ABC

I’ve tracked down more than a dozen people named Abc, including Abc Groff (1887-1966) in the Social Security Death Index (SSDI) and Abc Dixon on a list of “educable children” in Mississippi from 1878:

abc, name

ABCD

I haven’t found any true cases of Abcd yet, but plenty of people have had “A.B.C.D.” as initials. I did notice this on the 1940 U.S. Census, though — looks to me like Abcdania or Abcdenia:

abcdania, name

ABCDEF

One-upping the famed Abcde! I’ve seen two, one being Abcdef Riggs on the 1870 U.S. Census:

abcdef, name

A third person with the name — Herbert Abcdef Atkinson (born in Northumberland in 1904) — is mentioned in Russell Ash’s book Morecock, Fartwell, & Hoare.

I didn’t spot any letter-string names from the middle of the alphabet, but I did have some luck at the other end…

XYZ

I’ve discovered over a dozen people named Xyz, including Xyz Smith on the 1870 US Census:

xyz, name

Another was Xyz Crenshaw (1906-2002) in the SSDI. Here’s his gravestone:

xyz, name

I wonder how “Xyz” would be pronounced: ziz? eksiz?

I’ve also seen extended versions like Xyza, Xyzen, and Xyzemia. Here’s Xyzrapha Dismuke on the 1940 U.S. Census, for instance:

xyzrapha, name

What are your thoughts on names like these?