How popular is the baby name Bob 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 Bob.

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Popularity of the Baby Name Bob


Posts that Mention the Name Bob

Name quotes #118: Blossom, Ronaldo, Crusoe

double quotation mark

April is here, so it’s time for another batch of name quotes!

From a 2009 NPR interview with jazz singer and pianist Blossom Dearie (1924-2009):

It is my real name, and everybody asks me that, but I don’t mind answering that question. […] I was born in the springtime, and my father gave me the name Blossom cause I was born in April and my bothers brought blossoms in the house.

(TV character Blossom Russo was named after Blossom Dearie.)

From an article about the first spoken dialogue system used in space:

Since Clarissa’s developers planned to set her up on the International Space Station (ISS), the team “went looking for names that had ‘ISS’ in them,” said [John] Dowding. “There aren’t many of those. Clarissa won out,” [Manny] Rayner told Space.com, adding that the team thought a woman’s name would make the system sound friendly.

(The system was first used aboard the ISS in 2005 — about a decade after Clarissa Explains it All was on the air.)

From an Instagram post by Irish television presenter Lisa Cannon:

I always feel oddly yet loosely connected to [the late Lisa Marie Presley] as I was an only child too and was named after her… Lisa Sara Marie Cannon – Lisa Marie because my father like the rest of the world was an Elvis fan and my middle name Sara after Bob Dylan’s Wife. My father at the time was a budding Rock Journalist for Hot Press Magazine & the NME in London so music of all genres was always playing in our home. When people ask you the origin of your name or who your named after it was always “Elvis’ daughter & Bob Dylan’s Wife” which always got a smile.

From a recent article about YouTube influencers The Newbys:

Tiny traveller Crusoe Newby is less than two years old — but has already tottered his way around 24 different countries.

[…]

Named after fictional castaway Robinson Crusoe, the hero of the 18th century novel by Daniel Defoe, he had travelled to 11 countries while still in the womb. But his official tally of 24 have all been racked up since his birth. His adventure started when Tara and John decided to sell their Bristol home and convert a £3,000 van to travel the globe in May 2020.

[…]

“Robinson Crusoe is John’s favourite book of all time because it inspired him as a young boy to think of a life of adventure.”

From a 2016 article about Portuguese soccer player Cristiano Ronaldo:

Cristiano Ronaldo dos Santos Aveiro was named, in part, after Ronald Reagan, president of the United States at the time of his birth [in 1985] and his father’s favorite actor. “My parents named me after him because they both liked this name and thought it sounded strong,” he tells me. “I know that my father admired him.”

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

Name change: Bob Miller to Ben Lexcen

Winged keel of the Australia II racing yacht, winner of the 1983 America's Cup
Winged keel of the Australia II

In 1936, Robert “Bob” Miller was born in the Australian outback — “in bone-dry Boggabri, a long day’s voyage from the sea.”

So it’s intriguing that, in his teens, Miller developed an interest in sailboat design. He went on to become a professional marine architect.

In the early 1960s, Bob Miller and his friend Craig Whitworth founded a boat-building and sail-making company called Miller & Whitworth in Sydney.

Miller continued doing his own design work on the side, though. Most notably, he began collaborating with Australian millionaire Alan Bond on a series of racing yachts in the late 1960s.

The most famous of these yachts was the Australia II, which, in 1983, became the first non-American yacht to win the America’s Cup. This was the cup that Thomas Lipton had failed to win 5 times in a row, from 1899 to 1930, and that Bond and Miller themselves had also failed to win 3 times previously, from 1974 to 1980.

Except…by 1983, Bob Miller wasn’t “Bob Miller” anymore. He was Ben Lexcen.

Why the name change?

Because, in the mid-1970s, Miller and Whitworth had had a falling-out:

Miller left the firm, but found he could not take his name with him. “I had had a great design business, a fantastic business, and I lost all that,” says Lexcen. “They were advertising everywhere, and all my mail was going to them. I tried to get the post office to change it. Noooo. I just had to do something, so I changed my name. Lexcen was one of my wife’s family names from way back. I had a friend who had a computer check it against the mailing lists of the Reader’s Digest and American Express to see if there was anybody with that name, and there wasn’t, at least not in Australia.” And Ben? “I wanted the same number of letters.”

But that’s not the only version of the name-change story.

In another variation, when the time came Lexcen borrowed a word from the project he was working on at the moment — Lexan hatch covers — and added it to the name of his recently deceased dog, Benjie.

Specifics aside, Ben Lexcen (formerly Bob Miller) and the other members of the Australia II team became national heroes following their historical victory. In fact, a baby born in Melbourne around the time of the win was named Charles Australia II John Bertrand Ben Lexcen.

Sources:

Image: Adapted from Winged Keel of Americas Cup Yacht Australia II by Ken Hodge under CC BY 2.0.

Name quotes #107: India, Arvid, Amy

bobcat
NPS bobcat

From a recent National Park Service Instagram post:

Fun fact: The actual number of bobcats named Bob is fairly small.

Many actually prefer Robert.

From a 2020 Facebook post by The Pioneer Woman, Anne Marie “Ree” Drummond (found via Mashed):

Happy Father’s Day to my father-in-law, whom I love, my own dad, whom I adore, and my husband Ladd, pictured here with our first child (who was conceived on our honeymoon, btw…sorry if that’s TMI, we almost named her Sydney but changed our mind because we didn’t want her to have to explain it her whole life).

(They ended up naming her Alex.)

A 2017 tweet by Indian prime minister Narendra Modi to the daughter of South African cricketer Jonty Rhodes, India Rhodes (b. 2015), who was named in honor of the country:

Happy birthday to India, from India. :)

From the 2008 essay “What’s in a name?” by Arvid Huisman in the Daily Freeman-Journal:

As a first grader I wanted to be named Johnnie or Bobbie or Billie or Tommie — just about anything except Arvid.

By the time I was a young adult I realized that a unique name can be an asset and I continue to believe that. Once people commit an uncommon name to memory they don’t soon forget and that’s a good thing in business.

From a 1935 article about baby names in a newspaper from Perth, Australia:

After Amy Johnson (Mrs. J. A. Mollison) made her wonderful flight to Australia it seemed that every baby girl was being named “Amy.” They were comparatively lucky. “Amy” is rather a nice name, but what about the unfortunate boys who were called “Lindbergh” or “Lindy” in 1927 to commemorate the young American’s lone Atlantic flight?

Amy Johnson newspaper article 1935

(I don’t have any Australian baby name data that goes back to the late 1920s — Amy Johnson‘s solo flight from England to Australia was in 1930 — but, anecdotally, most of the Australian Amys I’m seeing in the records were born decades before the flight.)

From the obituary of singer (and early ’60s teen idol) Bobby Rydell at New York Daily News:

He was so popular and tied to teen culture that Rydell High School in the stage and screen musical “Grease” was named for him.

“It was so nice to know that the high school was named after me,” he told the Allentown Morning Call in 2014. “And I said, ‘Why me?’ It could have been Anka High, Presley High, Everly High, Fabian High, Avalon High. And they came up with Rydell High, and, once again, total honor.”

(Dozens of baby boys were named after Rydell as well.)

Where did the baby name Senta come from in 1964?

Actress Senta Berger in the movie "The Victors" (1963).
Senta Berger in “The Victors“

The name Senta first appeared in the U.S. baby name data in the mid-1960s:

  • 1966: 18 baby girls named Senta
  • 1965: 12 baby girls named Senta
  • 1964: 12 baby girls named Senta [debut]
  • 1963: unlisted
  • 1962: unlisted

The source?

Austrian actress Senta Berger, who moved to Hollywood in the early ’60s and was appearing regularly in movies and on TV by 1964.

Around that time, for instance, she could be seen in the movie The Victors (released in late 1963), the TV anthology series Bob Hope Presents the Chrysler Theatre (Mar. 1964), and the TV spy series The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (Nov. 1964).

Perhaps the most interesting thing she was in, from a historical perspective, was NBC’s See How They Run (Oct. 1964), which involved orphaned siblings being chased by spies. The show was marketed as the very first made-for-TV movie. One contemporary reviewer said “that even if the execution of the idea was not exceptional–it came out the way Walt Disney might have written the Ian Fleming books–the experiment was still extremely worthwhile.”

The name Senta is a diminutive of the German name Kreszentia, which ultimately comes from the Latin name Crescentius. The root word is the verb crescere, meaning “to grow.”

Do you like the name Senta?

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