How popular is the baby name Alfred 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 Alfred.

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Popularity of the baby name Alfred


Posts that mention the name Alfred

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

Flag of Denmark
Flag of 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.

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…

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

Image: Adapted from Flag of Denmark (public domain)

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.

What popularized the baby name Tristan in the 1990s?

The character Tristran Ludlow (played by actor Brad Pitt) in the movie "Legends of the Fall" (1994).
Tristan Ludlow from “Legends of the Fall“

The baby name Tristan saw an impressive jump in usage in the mid-1990s:

  • 1997: 4,196 baby boys named Tristan [rank: 92nd]
  • 1996: 5,458 baby boys named Tristan [rank: 68th]
  • 1995: 3,088 baby boys named Tristan [rank: 121st]
  • 1994: 492 baby boys named Tristan [rank: 452nd]
  • 1993: 567 baby boys named Tristan [rank: 409th]

The name’s rise in 1995 was the second-largest of the year (after Austin), and it reached the U.S. top 100 for the first time ever in 1996.

Here’s a visual:

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

Many variant forms of the name saw higher usage during those years as well…

1994199519961997
Tristen736181,1881,078
Triston48372726666
Tristin34288630549
Tristian36157304287
Trystan1899182178
Treston31585860
Tryston.426975
Tristyn.286048
Trysten28†4862
Trystin6133742
Tristain.112521
Trestan.1176
Trestin511610
Trystyn.7*125
Tresten..810
Tristion..5*6
Tristine..5†.
Thristan..5*.
*Debut, †Gender-specific debut

Tristen, Triston, Tristin and Tristian all entered top 1,000 in 1995, and Trystan followed a year later.

The name that saw the largest relative increase in usage in 1995 was Tristin. In second place? Tristen.

(…And this doesn’t even account for all the Tristan-related girl names that got a mid-’90s boost.)

So, what was the influence?

The character Tristan Ludlow (played by Brad Pitt) from the movie Legends of the Fall — a saga set in rural Montana during the early decades of the 1900s.

Tristan was the rebellious middle son of rancher Col. William Ludlow (Anthony Hopkins). He and his brothers — the older, ambitious Alfred (Aidan Quinn), and the younger, naïve Samuel (Henry Thomas) — all fell in love with the same beautiful woman, Susannah (Julia Ormond).

Released at the very end of 1994, the “big, robust Western love story” ranked #1 at the box office for four weeks straight in the early months of 1995.

Regarding Tristan Ludlow’s first name, one incredibly prescient reviewer noted that we should “look for [it] to be given to more than a few babies over the next few years.”

Tristan Ludlow didn’t end up with Susannah, but he did get married — to a Native American woman named Isabel (Karina Lombard). The name Karina saw it’s highest-ever usage in 1995, and the usage of Isabel also increased — though it was already on the rise, so there’s no telling how much of the increase was due specifically to the film.

Speaking of Isabel’s rise…

The fact that Legends of the Fall featured both a character named Isabel and an actor named Aidan, and that forms of these names (Isabella and Aiden) went on to reach the U.S. top 10 — peaking almost simultaneously a decade and a half later — is very interesting to me. It makes me wonder whether the movie’s impact on U.S. baby names wasn’t substantially greater (but also more complex?) than what the mid-’90s data would have us believe.

Isabella ranking, U.S.Aiden ranking, U.S.
20123rd10th
20112nd9th*
20101st*9th*
20091st*12th
20082nd16th
*Peak usage

(I began wondering about this after a friend of mine, who has a son named Aiden, mentioned that she’d had the name in the back of her mind ever since seeing Legends of the Fall as a teenager.)

What are your thoughts on this theory?

And, do you know anyone with a name that was inspired by Legends of the Fall?

Sources: