How popular is the baby name Barbara 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 Barbara.

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Popularity of the baby name Barbara


Posts that mention the name Barbara

Popular baby names in Poland, 2023

Flag of Poland
Flag of Poland

Last year, the European country of Poland welcomed approximately 272,000 babies.

What were the most popular names among all these babies? Zofia and Nikodem.

Here are Poland’s top 50 girl names and top 50 boy names of 2023:

Girl names

  1. Zofia, 4,968 baby girls
  2. Zuzanna, 4,800
  3. Laura, 4,602
  4. Hanna, 4,565
  5. Maja, 4,461
  6. Julia, 4,254
  7. Oliwia, 3,846
  8. Pola, 3,692
  9. Alicja, 3,593
  10. Maria, 3,137
  11. Lena, 2,966
  12. Antonina, 2,912
  13. Emilia, 2,785
  14. Amelia, 2,759
  15. Klara, 2,660
  16. Michalina, 2,644
  17. Iga, 2,563
  18. Liliana, 2,561
  19. Wiktoria, 2,531
  20. Helena, 2,511
  21. Marcelina, 2,351
  22. Gabriela, 1,883
  23. Aleksandra, 1,878
  24. Nela, 1,768
  25. Kornelia, 1,761
  26. Lucja, 1,732
  27. Blanka, 1,636
  28. Anna, 1,581
  29. Nadia, 1,565
  30. Natalia, 1,441
  31. Lilianna, 1,422
  32. Jagoda, 1,410
  33. Mia, 1,232
  34. Milena, 1,148
  35. Róza, 1,132
  36. Kaja, 1,127
  37. Rozalia, 1,103
  38. Anastazja, 1,063
  39. Nina, 1,001
  40. Aniela, 984
  41. Weronika, 959
  42. Sara, 937
  43. Nikola, 917
  44. Barbara, 892
  45. Aurelia, 880
  46. Matylda, 845
  47. Liwia, 779
  48. Karolina, 752
  49. Martyna, 712
  50. Agata, 656

Boy names

  1. Nikodem, 6,532 baby boys
  2. Antoni, 5,663
  3. Jan, 5,638
  4. Aleksander, 5,625
  5. Franciszek, 4,965
  6. Leon, 4,916
  7. Jakub, 4,474
  8. Ignacy, 4,166
  9. Mikolaj, 4,081
  10. Stanislaw, 3,874
  11. Filip, 3,506
  12. Szymon, 3,269
  13. Wojciech, 3,078
  14. Adam, 2,889
  15. Tymon, 2,782
  16. Marcel, 2,759
  17. Kacper, 2,684
  18. Maksymilian, 2,655
  19. Oliwier, 2,578
  20. Wiktor, 2,347
  21. Michal, 2,183
  22. Igor, 1,899
  23. Julian, 1,855 (tie)
  24. Milosz, 1,855 (tie)
  25. Tymoteusz, 1,724 (tie)
  26. Gabriel, 1,724 (tie)
  27. Oskar, 1,683
  28. Piotr, 1,630
  29. Dawid, 1,276
  30. Bruno, 1,186
  31. Hubert, 1,159
  32. Krzysztof, 1,069
  33. Natan, 1,065
  34. Bartosz, 1,053
  35. Dominik, 1,022
  36. Mateusz, 900
  37. Cezary, 886
  38. Henryk, 880
  39. Alan, 869
  40. Karol, 866
  41. Tadeusz, 861
  42. Fabian, 837
  43. Tomasz, 830
  44. Maciej, 783
  45. Teodor, 761
  46. Ksawery, 752
  47. Milan, 733
  48. Artur, 722
  49. Leo, 669
  50. Pawel, 640

(Because L-with-a-stroke and Z-with-an-overdot don’t render properly on my site, you’ll have to imagine they exist in several of the above: the girl names Lucja and Róza, and the boy names Mikolaj, Stanislaw, Michal, Milosz, and Pawel.)

Poland’s data goes all the way down to names with just two instances of usage, so here’s a sampling of the rare baby names at the opposite end of the spectrum:

Rare girl namesRare boy names
Aryna, Burla, Christine, Dziyana, Esti, Flavia, Goja, Hafsa, Iwanna, Jutrzenka, Kleopatra, Latika, Miszel, Nasturcja, Oryslava, Polianna, Raya, Svitlana, Tinatin, Ursula, Vienna, Wiera, Yevahelina, ZoryanaArseniusz, Bozydar, Czarek, Dachi, Ege, Ferdinand, Gabrielius, Hleb, Ioannis, Joszko, Kerem, Lotar, Maciek, Nicolai, Oktawiusz, Przemek, Reece, Szarbel, Tymek, Umut, Vitali, Wolfgang, Yanis, Zawisza

On the girls’ side: Jutrzenka means “dawn” in Polish, and Nasturcja is the Polish word for nasturtium (a type of flower).

On the boys’ side: Hleb (Belarusian) comes from Gleb (Russian), which comes from Guðleifr (Old Norse: “god” + “heir”), and Zawisza can be traced back to a Slavic word meaning “envy.”

Finally, here are Poland’s 2022 rankings, if you’d like to compare last year to the year before.

Sources: Imiona nadawane dzieciom w Polsce – Otwarte Dane, Births drop to new postwar low in Poland as population falls almost 1 million in a decade – Notes from Poland, Behind the Name

Image: Adapted from Flag of Poland (public domain)

What gave the baby name Christiaan a boost in 1968?

South African cardiac surgeon Christiaan Barnard (1922-2001)
Dr. Christiaan Barnard

The baby name Christiaan (pronounced KRIS-tee-ahn) — the Dutch and Afrikaans form of Christian — saw peak usage in the U.S. in two different years: 1968 and 1970.

  • 1972: 22 baby boys named Christiaan
  • 1971: 30 baby boys named Christiaan
  • 1970: 43 baby boys named Christiaan
  • 1969: 24 baby boys named Christiaan
  • 1968: 43 baby boys named Christiaan
  • 1967: 8 baby boys named Christiaan
  • 1966: unlisted

The name’s 1968 upswing represents the second-steepest rise among baby boy names that year (after Dustin).

Here’s the graph:

Graph of the usage of the first name Christiaan in the U.S. since 1880.
Usage of the first name Christiaan

What was calling attention to the name Christiaan in the late ’60s and early ’70s?

South African surgeon Christiaan Barnard, who made headlines worldwide after performing the first human heart transplant on December 3, 1967, at Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town.

Dr. Barnard led a team of 20 surgeons as they transplanted a heart from the body of donor Denise Darvall (a 25-year-old woman who’d been fatally injured in a car accident) into the body of recipient Louis Washkansky (a 55-year-old man terminally ill with heart disease).

The operation was considered a success, even though Washkansky died of pneumonia 18 days later.

The transplant attracted unprecedented media coverage, turning Dr. Barnard into an overnight celebrity:

Charismatic and photogenic, he appeared on magazine covers, met dignitaries and film stars, drawing crowds and photographers wherever he went.

Dr. Barnard performed a second human heart transplant on January 2, 1968 — just one month after the first. The second recipient, 59-year-old Philip Blaiberg, not only survived the operation, but lived for another 19 months and 15 days before dying of organ rejection in August of 1969.

The success of this second operation “secured the future of heart transplants.” It also likely caused the usage of Christiaan to peak again in 1970.

(That said, news about Dr. Barnard’s personal life may have also been a factor. He divorced his wife of twenty years, Aletta, in mid-1969 and married a 19-year-old Johannesburg socialite named Barbara Zoellner in early 1970.)

I’m not sure how many of the baby boys named Christiaan during the late ’60s and early ’70s were taught to pronounce their names KRIS-tee-ahn, as I couldn’t find any clips of U.S. newscasters using the Afrikaans pronunciation. Even talk show host Dick Cavett defaulted to the American pronunciation, KRIS-chen, when Dr. Christiaan Barnard appeared on The Dick Cavett Show [vid] in May of 1970.

What are your thoughts on the name Christiaan?

Sources:

Image: Adapted from Professor Barnard photo by Jac. de Nijs via Nationaal Archief under CC0.

Name quotes #120: Abba, Barbara, Clementa

double quotation mark

Here’s the latest batch of name-related quotes…

A name story from the recent Washington Post article “What’s in a name?” by John Kelly:

When Barbara Zigli was young, she never bothered to ask her parents why they named her Barbara. Much later, she learned that Saint Barbara is the patron saint of miners.

“My mother’s father was a coal miner, so I asked her if that was why they named me Barbara,” wrote Barbara, of Arlington.

There was a long pause, then Barbara’s mother said, “Uh, yeah, that’s it.”

Barbara was immediately suspicious. “No, really, mom,” she demanded. “Why did you name me Barbara?”

“Promise me you won’t get mad,” Barbara’s mother said. “You’re named after Miss Barbara on [the TV show] ‘Romper Room.'”

From a 2012 article about Woody Guthrie’s son Joady in the Mercury News:

Joady Guthrie was named for Tom Joad, the hero of John Steinbeck’s novel “The Grapes of Wrath,” because his father, himself a political activist and an Oklahoman, or “Okie,” was sympathetic to the plight of 1930s farmers of the Great Depression. Many of Woody Guthrie’s songs championed Dust Bowl migrant workers and working people.

From the 2015 obituary of Rev. Clementa C. Pinckney in the New York Times:

Mr. Pinckney’s late mother, Theopia Stevenson Aikens, was a baseball fan who named her son after Roberto Clemente, the Pittsburgh Pirates All-Star, who had died in a plane crash seven months earlier while delivering aid to earthquake victims in Nicaragua, family members said. His last name, one of the most storied in South Carolina politics, is that of a pair of white slaveholding cousins who signed the United States Constitution.

From a 2004 New York Times article about Denmark’s Law on Personal Names (which was originally put in place to force the Danes to use family surnames instead of patronymics):

Then in the 1960’s, a furor erupted over the first name Tessa, which resembled tisse, which means to urinate in Danish. Distressed over the lack of direction in the law, the Danish government expanded the statute to grapple with first names. Now the law is as long as an average-size book.

From a recent article in the Mirror about a woman named Abba after Swedish supergroup Abba:

When I was a child, everyone would question my name and make comments about it. They’d get confused by how it’s spelt – it’s the same as the band.

I’ve never come across anyone else named Abba and I love how unique it is. I always get asked ‘Abba like the band?’ when I say it.

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

Popular baby names in Poland, 2022

Flag of Poland
Flag of Poland

The country of Poland is located in Central Europe and shares a border with seven other countries (including Russia, Germany, and Slovakia).

Last year, Poland welcomed approximately 305,000 babies — 290,000 of which were born to Polish parents and 15,000 of which were born to non-Polish parents (many of them Ukrainian refugees).

What were the most popular names among all these babies? Zofia and Antoni.

Here are Poland’s top 50 girl names and top 50+ boy names of 2022:

Girl Names

  1. Zofia, 5,714 baby girls
  2. Zuzanna, 5,558
  3. Hanna, 5,261
  4. Laura, 5,095
  5. Maja, 4,979
  6. Julia, 4,936
  7. Oliwia, 4,440
  8. Alicja, 4,261
  9. Pola, 4,087
  10. Lena, 3,811
  11. Maria, 3,732
  12. Emilia, 3,188
  13. Amelia, 3,143
  14. Antonina,3,133
  15. Wiktoria, 3,037
  16. Liliana, 2,860
  17. Iga, 2,847 – a diminutive of either Jadwiga or Ignacja
  18. Michalina, 2,749
  19. Marcelina, 2,720
  20. Helena, 2,680
  21. Klara, 2,523
  22. Aleksandra, 2,370
  23. Gabriela, 2,220
  24. Anna, 1,965
  25. Kornelia, 1,927
  26. Lucja, 1,862
  27. Blanka, 1,853
  28. Nela, 1,840
  29. Nadia, 1,792
  30. Natalia, 1,734
  31. Jagoda, 1,554
  32. Lilianna, 1,472
  33. Milena, 1,467
  34. Anastazja, 1,297
  35. Mia, 1,217
  36. Kaja, 1,213
  37. Nikola, 1,109
  38. Nina, 1,102
  39. Weronika, 1,081
  40. Róza, 1,074
  41. Rozalia, 1,072
  42. Aniela, 1,039
  43. Sara, 998
  44. Barbara, 993
  45. Matylda, 968
  46. Karolina, 887
  47. Martyna, 840
  48. Liwia, 821
  49. Agata, 811
  50. Eliza, 756

Boy Names

  1. Antoni, 6,670 baby boys
  2. Jan, 6,341
  3. Aleksander, 6,201
  4. Nikodem, 6,155
  5. Franciszek, 5,696
  6. Jakub, 5,535
  7. Leon, 5,091
  8. Mikolaj, 4,499
  9. Stanislaw, 4,265
  10. Filip, 4,107
  11. Ignacy, 4,086
  12. Szymon, 4,069
  13. Wojciech, 3,539
  14. Adam, 3,348
  15. Kacper, 3,251
  16. Tymon, 3,164
  17. Marcel, 3,081
  18. Maksymilian, 3,055
  19. Michal, 2,758
  20. Wiktor, 2,709
  21. Oliwier, 2,551
  22. Tymoteusz, 2,278
  23. Milosz, 2,234
  24. Igor, 2,226
  25. Julian, 2,040
  26. Piotr, 1,987
  27. Oskar, 1,932
  28. Gabriel, 1,712
  29. Dawid, 1,489
  30. Krzysztof, 1,352
  31. Bartosz, 1,315
  32. Dominik, 1,271
  33. Natan, 1,222
  34. Bruno, 1,214
  35. Mateusz, 1,209
  36. Hubert, 1,152
  37. Karol, 1,141
  38. Alan, 1,058
  39. Fabian, 1,014
  40. Tomasz, 977
  41. Maciej, 975
  42. Henryk, 948
  43. Cezary, 892 (tie)
  44. Tadeusz, 892 (tie)
  45. Artur, 858
  46. Ksawery, 849 – a form of Xavier
  47. Pawel, 753
  48. Milan, 727
  49. Daniel, 717
  50. Kazimierz, 674 (tie)
  51. Kuba, 674 (tie)

(Because L-with-a-stroke doesn’t render properly on my site, you’ll have to imagine one exists in several of the above: the girl name Lucja and the boy names Mikolaj, Stanislaw, Michal, Milosz, and Pawel.)

Poland’s data goes all the way down to names with just two instances of usage, so here’s a sampling of the rare baby names at the opposite end of the spectrum:

Rare Girl NamesRare Boy Names
Aglaja, Beyza, Celestyna, Dasza, Esenia, Freyja, Harper, Illia, Jaga, Koralia, Lilibet, Melanija, Nurana, Oktavia, Penelope, Radochna, Sviatoslava, Tekla, Ustina, Vasylisa, Yeseniya, ZytaAffan, Bronislav, Caspian, Demjan, Elisey, Florin, Gajusz, Henrik, Igo, Jarogniew, Klimek, Lian, Matwej, Neo, Przemek, Rishi, Salwador, Timo, Vadzim, Witosz, Yuri, Zorian

The two Lilibets were likely named with Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s daughter Lilibet Diana (b. 2021) in mind.

Finally, here are Poland’s 2021 rankings, if you’d like to compare last year to the year before.

Sources: Imiona nadawane dzieciom w Polsce – Otwarte Dane, Poland’s birth rate in decline shows study – The First News, Behind the Name

Image: Adapted from Flag of Poland (public domain)