How popular is the baby name Alexei 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 Alexei.
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The literary surname Karenina first appeared in the U.S. baby name data in 1978:
1980: unlisted
1979: unlisted
1978: 7 baby girls named Karenina [debut]
1977: unlisted
1976: unlisted
But Leo Tolstoy’s famous novel Anna Karenina was first published (in book form) way back in 1878, and it wasn’t translated from Russian to English until 1901. So how did “Karenina” suddenly wind up in the U.S. baby name data in the late 1970s?
Television! Specifically, the 10-episode mini-series Anna Karenina that originally aired on British television in 1977, then aired on American television (as part of PBS’s Masterpiece Theatre) in early 1978. The mini-series starred British actress Nicola Pagett as Countess Anna Karenina.
Russians use gender-specific forms of surnames, so “Karenina” is the feminine form of Karenin (the surname of Anna’s husband, Alexei). How did Tolstoy come up with the surname Karenin?
Many of the invented surnames in the novel have symbolic meanings or associations, some of which are humorous. […] The new passion which Tolstoy developed for learning Greek in the early 1870s is reflected in the etymology of ‘Karenin.’
Karenin was derived from káranon, the ancient Greek word for “head.”
The four-syllable surname Karenina is pronounced with a stress on the second syllable. In English it’s often pronounced kah-REH-nih-nuh, but in Russian (as you can hear at Forvo) it’s more along the lines of kah-RAY-nee-nuh.
Bartless, Rosamund. “Principal Characters and Guide to Pronunciation.” Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy, translated by Rosamund Bartless. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014.
If you’re on the hunt for baby names with a numerological value of 2, you’re in luck! Because today’s post features hundreds of 2-names.
Before we get to the names, though — how do we know that they’re “twos” in numerology?
Turning names into numbers
Here’s how to calculate the numerological value of a name.
First, for each letter, come up with a number to represent that letter’s position in the alphabet. (Letter A would be number 1, letter B would be number 2, and so forth.) Then, add all the numbers together. If the sum has two or more digits, add the digits together recursively until the result is a single digit. That single digit is the name’s numerological value.
For instance, the letters in the name Aurora correspond to the numbers 1, 21, 18, 15, 18, and 1. The sum of these numbers is 74. The digits of 74 added together equal 11, and the digits of 11 added together equal 2 — the numerological value of Aurora.
Baby names with a value of 2
Below you’ll find the most popular 2-names per gender, according to the latest U.S. baby name data. I’ve further sub-categorized them by total sums — just in case any of those larger numbers are significant to anyone.
2 via 11
The letters in the following baby names add up to 11, which reduces to two (1+1=2).
Girl names (2 via 11)
Boy names (2 via 11)
Adea, Fe, Aia
Aj, Ja, Cabe
2 via 20
The letters in the following baby names add up to 20, which reduces to two (2+0=2).
There’s no definitive answer, unfortunately, because various numerological systems exist, and each one has its own interpretation of the number two. That said, if we look at a couple of modern numerology/astrology websites, we see 2 being described as “diplomatic,” “cooperative,” “peaceful,” “gentle,” and “understanding.”
We can also look at associations, which are a bit more concrete. Here are some things that are associated with the number 2:
Hands
Feet
Eyes
Ears
Lungs
Chopsticks
Knitting needles
Complementary pairings (e.g., pen and paper, bow and arrow, peanut butter and jelly)
Dualities (e.g., day and night, yin and yang, war and peace)
Boxing (2 competitors; 2 fists)
Partner dancing
DNA double helix
What does the number 2 mean to you? What are your strongest associations with the number?
P.S. To see names with other numerological values, check out the posts for the numbers one, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, and nine.
Nikita Khrushchev was the leader of the Soviet Union for over a decade (1953 to 1964) during the early Cold War.
Between the time the U.S.S.R. launched Sputnik in 1957 and sent Yuri Gagarin on the first manned space flight in 1961, Khrushchev became first Soviet head of state to visit the United States.
Upon the invitation of president Dwight D. Eisenhower, Khrushchev and his family (wife Nina, son Sergei, daughters Julia and Rada, and son-in-law Alexei) flew to Washington, D.C., on September 15, 1959. They visited New York, California, Iowa, and Pennsylvania before flying back to Moscow on the 27th.
Though Khrushchev famously never made it to Disneyland, he did manage to make an impression upon expectant parents:
Girls named Nikita
Boys named Nikita
1961
39
21
1960
56
25
1959
44
19*
1958
16
.
1957
13
.
*Debut
The name Nikita had appeared in the U.S. baby name data as a girl name before, but in 1959 it showed up for the very first time as a boy name.*
These days the usage of Nikita is about equal for males and females — 93 baby girls and 92 baby boys got the name in 2015. But there was a spike in female usage in 1985, thanks to the song “Nikita” by Elton John. (American radio listeners similarly interpreted Luka as a girl name a couple of years later.)
The name Nikita can be traced back to the ancient Greek word for “victor,” niketes, which is based on the more familiar word nike, meaning “victory.”
And eight years after the name Nikita debuted, another Russian arrival, Svetlana Stalina, showed up and added yet another Soviet-inspired baby name to the mix…
*To debut in the SSA’s baby name data, a name has to be given to least 5 babies of one gender or the other within a single calendar year.
Looking for a set of baby names with something in common? If so, here are some 6-letter anagram names for you to check out!
Anagrams are words that contain the same set of letters, but not in the same sequence. For instance, the words “listen,” “silent,” and “tinsel” are all anagrams of one another.
Anagram names can be a neat option for siblings — particularly multiples (like twins and triplets). They’re also a clever way to connect a baby name to the name of an older relative (e.g., grandpa Weston, grandson Townes).
Below are hundreds of six-letter names (collected from the SSA’s huge database of U.S. baby names) that happen to be anagrams of other names.
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