How popular is the baby name Alfred in the United States right now? How popular was it historically? Find out using the graph below! Plus, check out all the blog posts that mention the name Alfred.

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Popularity of the Baby Name Alfred


Posts that Mention the Name Alfred

Name quotes #119: Ivan, Eva, Kelly

Czech hockey player Ivan Ivan
“Ivan Ivan Ivan” (typo)

Welcome to May! Here’s this month’s batch of name-related quotes.

From a 2022 article in Sporting News about young Czech hockey player Ivan Ivan:

Ivan Ivan, a Czechia forward who has the same first and last name, took the hockey world by storm last December when he was on the team’s roster at the canceled World Juniors. While a graphic from December stating that his name was Ivan Ivan Ivan caused a stir, it’s unfortunately just Ivan Ivan.

(“Ivan Ivan” is a reduplicated name.)

From the 2021 article “How your name affects your personality” at BBC Future:

[W]hile a less common name may be disadvantageous in the short-term (increasing the risk of rejection and lowering your likeability) it could have advantages over the longer-term by engendering in you a greater sense of your personal uniqueness. Consider another new study by Cai and his team at Beijing’s Institute of Psychology — even after controlling for family and socioeconomic background, they found that having a rarer name was associated with increased odds of having a more unusual career, such as film director or judge.

[…]

Having an unusual name might even shape us to be more creative and open-minded, according to research by Zhu at Arizona State University and his colleagues. Zhu’s team cross-checked the names of the chief executives at over a thousand firms and found that the rarer their names, the more distinctive the business strategies they tended to pursue, especially if they were also more confident by nature.

In a 2022 interview with The Telegraph, English lyricist Sir Tim Rice was asked to recall his ‘best day’:

When my first child, Eva, was born in 1975, although you don’t think of these things in a league table of great events. We named her after Eva Perón, but also because Eva is a good old English name.

(Rice, who became interested in the life of Eva Perón in the early 1970s, later collaborated with composer Andrew Lloyd Webber to create the Perón-inspired musical Evita, which opened in 1978.)

From the 2018 article “Oscar, Marcus, Casper, Cora: Companies are using human names to seem more friendly” in the Los Angeles Times:

Over the last few years, a crowd of new companies has emerged across tech, finance and health sporting a first-name brand. Oscar, Alfred, Lola — they have the look and feel of a friend, a colleague, maybe even your cat. And that’s the point: Make a connection with consumers that even Carnegie would appreciate.

[…]

The strategy seems to be working. Research shows that the more simple and human-sounding the name, the greater the company’s success.

[…]

The name game isn’t so much about the products or services being sold. It’s a subconscious approach to branding that borders on anthropomorphizing a company.

(I stumbled upon this one while doing research for a request post.)

From a January 2013 article about the divorce of Kelly Hildebrandt and Kelly Hildebrandt — one a male from Texas, the other a female from Florida:

The tale of the two Kellys began in February 2009, when Kelly Katrina Hildebrandt, of Coral Springs, found the Facebook profile of her future spouse. She saw that they had the exact same first and last name and sent him a friendly greeting to note their shared name.

They started having online exchanges and three weeks later, male Kelly, then 24, traveled from Texas to South Florida to meet female Kelly, then 20. They hit it off immediately and got engaged.

NBC 6 first reported about the Kellys in July 2009, and their story soon after went worldwide.

(My favorite line from the piece: “Male Kelly said he would be reluctant to marry anyone with the same name again.”)

From a GMA3 TikTok video featuring actress Rachel Zegler (born in 2001):

My [older] sister’s name is Jacqueline, and my parents originally wanted to name me Catherine, but they thought it would get a little bit confusing, cause they sound very similar. And my mom’s a big Friends fan, and thought that the name Rachel, for Jennifer Aniston’s character, sounded very beautiful on TV. And that is why I was named Rachel.

From a 2008 interview with Erykah Badu (whose daughter, Puma, was born in 2004):

The puma is one of the biggest and strongest cats in the feline family, but it has no roar. I thought that was very unique.

(Thanks to Badu, the name Erykah was the highest-debuting girl name of 1997.)

Want to see more quotes about names? Check out the name quotes category.

What gave the baby name Baylee a boost in 1995?

Firefighter Chris Fields holding the infant Baylee Almon, Oklahoma City bombing, 1995
Baylee Almon (and firefighter Chris Fields)

In 1995, the baby name Baylee — which had been slowly rising in usage for girls, but rarely given to boys — suddenly shot straight into the girls’ top 500, and debuted as a boy name:

Girls named BayleeBoys named Baylee
1997968 [rank: 296th]73
1996853 [rank: 331st]42
1995696 [rank: 379th]29*
1994173.
1993151.
*Debut

Here’s a visual:

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

Most other versions of the name (Bailey, Bailee, Baylie, Bayley, Bailie, Baleigh, Bayleigh, Baily, Bayli, Baylea, Bailea, Bayle, and Bailley) also saw higher-than-expected usage in 1995, and the rare variants Balee and Bailye both debuted in the data that year.

What caused all this interest in the name Baylee?

A famous photograph — one of a firefighter carrying a baby’s body out of the rubble of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in downtown Oklahoma City on April 19, 1995.

To this day, the Oklahoma City bombing remains “the worst act of homegrown terrorism in the nation’s history.” The bombing killed 168 people — including 19 children — and injured hundreds more.

The baby in the photo, Baylee Almon, had celebrated her first birthday just one day earlier (on April 18).

Baylee’s life was cut very short, but the Pulitzer Prize-winning photo ensured that people all over the country knew her name. And, once they knew it, they began to use it.

Here’s what Baylee Almon’s little sister Bella Kok recently said about the phenomenon:

Over the years we’ve met people from different states that have named their kids after my sister. It’s really nice knowing people will always remember, that she won’t just be a face, and that she means something.

In fact, babies are still being named for Baylee Almon.

An Oklahoma woman named Kayla Dearman — who was born just two days after Baylee Almon, and who grew up feeling a connection to her — had a baby girl on the first day of 2014. In honor of Almon, she named her daughter Bailey.

Sources:

Image: © 1995 Charles Porter IV

Popular baby names in Denmark, 2021

denmark

The country of Denmark, which is located in northern Europe and shares a border with only Germany, consists of two-thirds of the Jutland peninsula plus an archipelago of hundreds of islands.

Last year, Denmark welcomed 63,473 babies. The most popular names among these babies? Alma and Oscar.

Here are Denmark’s top 50 girl names and top 50 boy names of 2021:

Girl Names

  1. Alma, 482 baby girls
  2. Ida, 474
  3. Clara, 437
  4. Ella, 436
  5. Olivia, 428
  6. Freja, 425
  7. Emma, 420
  8. Luna, 411
  9. Agnes, 410
  10. Nora, 398
  11. Karla, 393 (tie)
  12. Sofia, 393 (tie)
  13. Anna, 387
  14. Ellie, 370
  15. Asta, 356 (tie)
  16. Lily, 356 (tie)
  17. Alberte, 353
  18. Frida, 313
  19. Josefine, 306
  20. Laura, 299
  21. Esther, 297
  22. Ellen, 287
  23. Astrid, 267
  24. Isabella, 259
  25. Saga, 245
  26. Aya, 242 – Anglicized form of Aija.
  27. Lærke, 237 – means “lark” in Danish.
  28. Marie, 223
  29. Liva, 220
  30. Hannah, 219
  31. Mathilde, 214
  32. Maja, 213 (tie)
  33. Vilma, 213 (tie)
  34. Merle, 209
  35. Victoria, 205
  36. Mille, 199
  37. Liv, 190
  38. Emily, 189
  39. Sofie, 183
  40. Leonora, 178 (tie)
  41. Molly, 178 (tie)
  42. Lea, 176
  43. Andrea, 175
  44. Gry, 172 – (pronounced groo, roughly) means “dawn” in Danish and Norwegian.
  45. Emilie, 167
  46. Vera, 161
  47. Rosa, 156
  48. Alva, 153
  49. Elina, 148
  50. Johanne, 147

Boy Names

  1. Oscar, 562 baby boys
  2. Karl, 555
  3. William, 520
  4. Oliver, 494
  5. Alfred, 470
  6. August, 462
  7. Valdemar, 458
  8. Malthe, 452
  9. Arthur, 451
  10. Emil, 447
  11. Lucas, 439
  12. Aksel, 435
  13. Noah, 427
  14. Victor, 395
  15. Elias, 375
  16. Theo, 355
  17. Otto, 340
  18. Viggo, 319
  19. Magnus, 306
  20. Felix, 301
  21. Elliot, 300
  22. Nohr, 293 – related to the Germanic word for “north.”
  23. Liam, 291 (tie)
  24. Matheo, 291 (tie)
  25. Anton, 289
  26. Hugo, 267
  27. Loui, 264
  28. Alexander, 254
  29. Theodor, 249
  30. Frederik, 248
  31. Konrad, 244
  32. Lauge, 243 – based on the Old Norse word félagi, meaning “companion, partner.”
    • The Old Norse word félag (“fellowship, partnership”), which referred to a joint financial venture during the Viking Age, gave rise to both the Old Norse word félagi and the modern English word fellow.
  33. Anker, 241
  34. Albert, 235
  35. Johan, 215
  36. Storm, 209
    • About half as many U.S. baby boys (105) were given the English word Storm as a name last year.
  37. Adam, 199
  38. Milas, 197
  39. Erik, 195 (tie)
  40. Pelle, 195 (tie)
  41. Vincent, 189
  42. Villads, 185 – form of Willihad.
  43. Villum, 183 – form of Vilhelm (William).
  44. Marius, 182
  45. Christian, 181
  46. Holger, 174 – derived from an Old Norse name that was comprised of elements meaning “small island” and “spear.”
  47. Ebbe, 169
  48. Walter, 168
  49. Luca, 167
  50. Benjamin, 162

In 2020, the top two names were Alma and Alfred.

Sources: Names of newborn children – Statistics Denmark, Denmark – Wikipedia, Nordic Names, Behind the Name, Félag – Wikipedia

P.S. The country of Denmark is part of the larger Kingdom of Denmark, which includes the two autonomous countries of Greenland and the Faroe Islands. I’ll post the rankings for both later this week…

Baby born to shipwreck survivors, named after ship

A depiction of the wreck of the Netherby (1866).
The wreck of the Netherby

On July 14, 1866, a ship called the Netherby — carrying emigrants from London to Brisbane — ran aground off the coast of King Island, located in the waters between Australia and Tasmania.

All 413 passengers and 49 crew made it to shore alive. Some of the food was saved, and a source of fresh water was located…but hundreds of people were still stranded on a largely uninhabited island in the middle of winter, “with only so much covering as could be provided by the use of sails and spars.”

Two days later, on July 16, a baby girl was born on the beach to passengers William and Ellen Cubbin.

Around the same time, second officer John Parry and a handful of others trekked roughly 35 miles to the Cape Wickham lighthouse. There, they borrowed a whaleboat and, despite rough seas and high winds, managed to reach mainland Australia (about 70 nautical miles away). Parry himself then traveled an extra 26 miles on horseback to Geelong, in order to telegram authorities in Melbourne.

About a week after the wreck, two rescue ships — the Victoria, followed by the Pharos — finally arrived.

All passengers and crew ended up surviving, remarkably.

And the baby’s name?

Netherby Victoria Louisa Cubbin — first name in honor of the the wrecked ship, second name in honor of the first rescue ship, and third name in honor of Louisa Hickmott, “the lighthouse keeper’s wife who gave Mr. Parry gin in a small bottle to sustain him whilst rowing and sailing a bulky whaleboat for help in heavy seas.”

Netherby “Nettie” Cubbin was the fourth of eight children. (Her siblings were named William, Alfred, Elizabeth, John, Walter, Eleanor, and Emily.) She eventually married and welcomed three children of her own — including a daughter to whom she passed down all three of her given names.

Sources:

P.S. The Netherby‘s captain, originally from Wales, was named Owen Owens.