How popular is the baby name Amit 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 Amit.

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Popularity of the Baby Name Amit


Posts that Mention the Name Amit

Name quotes #62: Alice, Shachar, Rolihlahla

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Ready for another batch of name-related quotes gathered from all over the place?

Let’s start with Liberian midwife Alice Sumo:

…[S]he was both surprised and delighted when quickly babies were named after her.

“I said ‘oh wow’ because with some of them I didn’t even know that they had named the baby after me! When you go to the market everybody is called Alice of Alex or Ellis. The last time I counted it was 862 Alices but now it has increased to 1,000 plus!

“To me the name Alice is an action name. Alice people are active people, they are caring people, they are loving people. A, the first letter in the alphabet. A for action.”

From Jack Burton’s article about songwriters Harry and Albert Von Tilzer in the April 9, 1949, issue of Billboard magazine:

After a season of tanbark and tinsel, Harry caught on with a traveling repertoire company, playing juvenile roles, singing songs of his own composing, and abandoning the family name of Gumm for a more glamorous and professional moniker. He took his mother’s maiden name of Tilzer and added “Von” for a touch of class. This switch in nomenclature proved to be the keystone of a songwriting dynasty which was destined to make history in Tin Pan Alley with the turn of the century.

The family’s surname was originally Gumbinsky. The phrase “tanbark and tinsel” refers to the circus; Harry was part of a traveling circus for a time as a teenager.

From an article about names in Israel by Abigail Klein Leichman:

I figured [Forest Rain’s] parents must have been hippies or Native Americans. In mainstream American culture, it is unusual to name children after elements of nature. How many people do you know named Rainbow, Lightning, Juniper Bush, Boulder, Valley, Oak, Prairie, Wellspring, or Wave?

In Israel, such names are extremely commonplace. If Forest Rain translated her name to Ya’ara Tal, no Israeli would think it exotic in the least. The words mentioned above translate to the everyday Hebrew names Keshet, Barak, Rotem, Sela, Guy, Alon, Bar, Ma’ayan, and Gal.

Another difference is that many modern Israeli names are unisex. You often cannot tell by name alone if someone is male or female. Tal, Gal, Sharon, Noam (pleasant), Shachar (Dawn), Inbar (amber), Inbal (bell), Neta (sapling), Ori (my light), Hadar (splendor), Amit (friend), and myriad other common names are used for either gender.

From an essay in which birder Nicholas Lund contemplates naming his baby after a bird (found via Emily of Nothing Like a Name):

Eventually Liz asked me to think about why I was pushing for this, and whether a birdy name was in the best interests of our kid. Did he need to carry on my own birding legacy? She was right. My son may very well grow up to love birds—I really hope he does—but he also might not. It should be his choice and not mine. If my dad had named me after some of his hobbies, you’d be calling me Carl Yastrzemski Lund or Rapala Lure Lund, and then I’d have to live with that.

From Nelson Mandela’s 1994 autobiography Long Walk to Freedom:

Apart from life, a strong constitution, and an abiding connection to the Thembu royal house, the only thing my father bestowed upon me at birth was a name, Rolihlahla. In Xhosa, Rolihlahla literally means “pulling the branch of a tree”, but its colloquial meaning more accurately would be “troublemaker.” I do not believe that names are destiny or that my father somehow divined my future, but in later years, friends and relatives would ascribe to my birth name the many storms I have both caused and weathered.

From an Irish newspaper article about the CSO disregarding fadas in Irish baby names:

The CSO recently unveiled its Baby Names of Ireland visualisation tool recently published by the Central Statistics Office (CSO) tool allowing users to check the popularity of names officially registered in Ireland. However, it does not allow for names with the síneadh fada or other diacritical marks that denote pronunciation or meaning.

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“Our language, while having a special status afforded it in the Constitution has been progressively marginalised to the fringes of bureaucracy.

“It behoves the Central Statistics Office above all other institutions to be correct in all matters it reports. This is where historians will first go to research,” [author Rossa Ó Snodaigh] said.

For more quotes about names, check out the name quotes category.

Popular twin names in Israel

As a follow-up to this morning’s post on baby names in Israel:

The most popular names given to Jewish girls this past year were Noa, Shira and Maya, and Daniel, Uri, Itai, Ido and Noam for boys. The most common pairs of names given to twins were Noam [pleasantness] and Amit [companion]; Ohr [light] and Shir [song]; Hod [glory] and Hadar [splendor]; and Shira [song] and Hodaya [thanks].

Among Arabs, the most common name is Muhammed, given to 13.8% of the boys. The most common Arab twins’ names were Muhammed and Ahmed, Muhammed and Mahmoud, and Mahmoud and Ahmed.

This comes from an article that was published in late 2004, so it’s out of date. Still, I thought it was worth posting as it’s the only twin name data for Israel that I’ve ever come across.

Source: Children in Israel

Name quotes #10: Bane, Adelaide, Hester

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From an article on names in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

“The Name Game” was a hit for Shirley Ellis in 1965. You know the song: “Shirley-Shirley-bo-burly, banana-fana-fo-furly, fee-fie-foe-murly … Shirley!” She bragged that “there isn’t any name that you can’t rhyme.” While entertaining soldiers in Vietnam, however, she discovered she couldn’t rhyme “Rich” or “Chuck.”

From Parents Name Their Child Bane, Secure His Future Grudge Against Batman, Mumbling at The Mary Sue:

A couple from England have named their newborn baby boy, Bane. Yes, after the Batman villain last seen in The Dark Knight Rises. Rugby player Jamie Jones-Buchanan and wife Emma told The Sun they always agreed to give their children unusual names.

Oh yes, there’s more.

The couple have three other children. Two are named after Star Trek characters – Lore and Dacx [sic] – while the other is named after Highlander’s Kurgan.

From an article in Fortune about finance guru Ramit Sethi:

Sethi says his name was originally supposed to be Amit, not Ramit. But when his parents realized that Amit Singh Sethi’s initials spelled out a profanity, they went back to the registrar and convinced him that he had erroneously dropped an “R.” “Like true immigrants, they didn’t request a name change, because that would be, like, $50,” he says.

From Elizabeth Walne of UK genealogy blog Your Local History:

Some first names can be very helpful in providing an approximate birth date for an individual if you are unsure. I once researched a family with sons Foch, Petain and Joffre – all Marshals of France during WWI, effectively ‘dating’ them to around 1914-18.

Another example with less specific dates is the girl’s name ‘Adelaide’ which became popular with Adelaide, wife of William IV (born 1792, crowned Queen Consort 1831 and died 1849) and then fell in popularity – but importantly for red herring purposes didn’t disappear completely – after the turn of the century.

And, finally, a bit about Quaker names from Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America (1989) by David Hackett Fischer:

Delaware Quakers also differed from other English-speaking people in the descent of names from one generation to the next. Unlike New England Puritans, Quakers named their first-born children after grandparents. Unlike Virginia Anglicans, they were careful to honor maternal and paternal lines in an even-handed way.

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These naming choices were not invented in the New World. They were virtually identical among Quakers in England’s North Midlands and America’s Delaware Valley. Through the eighteenth century, males received the same combination of biblical and teutonic names — with John, Thomas, William, Joseph and George the leading favorites among Friends on both sides of the water. Quaker females were mostly named Mary and Sarah in English and America, with Hannah, Anne, Elizabeth, Hester, Esther and Deborah strong secondary favorites. Plain English names such as Jane, and traditional Christian favorites such as Catherine and Margaret preserved their popularity among Quakers, more so than among Puritans. Also exceptionally popular among Quakers in England and America was the name of Phebe, which rarely appeared in Puritan and Anglican families.

For more quotes about names, check out the name quotes category.

Hebrew names lost in translation: Mangina, Dudu

I recently stumbled upon a funny post about Hebrew names at the blog Zabaj. Here’s a snippet:

So my family and I love to play this game – try and come up with as many names we can think of that sound great in Hebrew but hilarious in English. Some of them just look funny as they’re written and mispronounced, others are funny simply because of how they sound.

Some of the names mentioned in the post were:

  • Osnot (pronounced oh snot)
  • Oded (pronounced oh dead)
  • Amit (pronounced ah meat)
  • Ramit (pronounced raw meat)
  • Mangina (pronounced mahn gee nah)
  • Dudu (pronounced doo doo)

Imagine living in small-town USA with the name Mangina…