How popular is the baby name Cam 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 Cam.
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The name Gordon, after ranking as one of the top 100 boy names in the nation from the early 1910s to the early 1940s, began to decline in usage. Amid that decline, Gordon saw a conspicuous uptick in 1963:
1965: 1,445 baby boys named Gordon [rank: 178th]
1964: 1,770 baby boys named Gordon [rank: 167th]
1963: 2,084 baby boys named Gordon [rank: 158th]
1962: 1,783 baby boys named Gordon [rank: 173rd]
1961: 1,990 baby boys named Gordon [rank: 165th]
What caused it?
Astronaut Leroy Gordon Cooper (who went by Gordon, or “Gordo”).
Cooper learned to fly planes during his childhood in Oklahoma. After joining the Air Force in 1949, he worked first as a fighter pilot, then as a test pilot.
In 1959, he was selected by NASA to fly spacecraft for the country’s first human spaceflight program, Project Mercury.
In May of 1963, he piloted Mercury’s final crewed mission — which nearly ended in disaster when the spacecraft’s autopilot system failed while Cooper was preparing to re-enter Earth’s atmosphere:
After being strapped in the 6-ft.-wide Faith 7 for nearly a day and a half, he had to take over when the best equipment that the best of science could provide failed. He had to respond with incredible precision to directions from earth; he had to show a kind of skill and nerve and calm that no man has ever had to demonstrate.
Cooper performed a risky manual re-entry and returned to Earth unharmed.
Speaking of Earth, he’d orbited the planet 22 times during the 34 hours and 20 minutes he’d spent in space. (Cooper logged “more spaceflight time than the other five Mercury flights combined.”)
The success of the mission made Gordon Cooper a celebrity. He was honored with several parades (including a ticker-tape parade in New York City), featured on the cover of both Life and Time magazines, and given a number of awards (such as the NASA Distinguished Service Medal, presented by President John F. Kennedy).
The surname Cooper also got a slight boost (as a baby name) in the early ’60s, reaching then-peak usage in 1964:
1966: 15 baby boys named Cooper
1965: 26 baby boys named Cooper
1964: 30 baby boys named Cooper
1963: 18 baby boys named Cooper
1962: 8 baby boys named Cooper
Even Gordon Cooper’s family — his wife Gertrude (“Trudy”) and teenage daughters Camala Keoki (“Cam”) and Janita Lee (“Jan”) — influenced the baby name charts.
Trudy, Jan, and Cam Gordon
The baby name Trudy saw its last prominent spike in usage in 1963, and the uncommon names Camala (pronounced CAM-uh-luh) and Janita (pronounced jah-NEE-tuh) both peaked that year as well:
Girls named Trudy
Girls named Camala
Girls named Janita
1965
584 [377th]
22
38
1964
672 [365th]
9
36
1963
851 [325th]
37†
57†
1962
717 [355th]
6*
26
1961
682 [367th]
.
32
*Debut, †Peak usage
(The name Kamala peaked around the same time, but for a different reason.)
Gordo and Trudy met while attending the University of Hawaii. According to one source, they named their daughters “with a Hawaiian nostalgia.”
Ironically, the couple had long been estranged by 1963. They presented themselves as happily married to NASA — and to the public — because the space agency would only work with pilots who had stable home lives.
What are your thoughts on the names of Gordon Cooper’s daughters, Camala and Janita? Which name do you prefer?
P.S. A month after Cooper’s flight, the Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman (and first civilian) in space.
Looking for a pair of baby names that are mirror images of one another? If so, check out this long list of palindromic name pairings.
What’s a palindrome? It’s a word or phrase that can be read the same way in either direction, i.e., both forwards and backwards. For instance, the words “level,” “refer” and “pop” are all palindromes.
Each of the hundreds of pairings below features two names that contain the same sequence of letters, just written in opposite directions. (Nearly all of these names were collected from the SSA’s huge database of U.S. baby names.)
It’s also possible to come up with your own palindromic pairs by flipping traditional names to create brand new names, just as Ramon and Helen were flipped to create the modern names Nomar and Neleh.
If you’re on the hunt for baby names with a numerological value of 8, you’re in luck! Because today’s post features hundreds of 8-names.
Before we get to the names, though — how do we know that they’re “eights” in numerology?
Turning names into numbers
Here’s how to calculate the numerological value of a name.
First, for each letter, come up with a number to represent that letter’s position in the alphabet. (Letter A would be number 1, letter B would be number 2, and so forth.) Then, add all the numbers together. If the sum has two or more digits, add the digits together recursively until the result is a single digit. That single digit is the name’s numerological value.
For instance, the letters in the name Wyatt correspond to the numbers 23, 25, 1, 20, and 20. The sum of these numbers is 89. The digits of 89 added together equal 17, and the digits of 17 added together equal 8 — the numerological value of Wyatt.
Baby names with a value of 8
Below you’ll find the most popular 8-names per gender, according to the latest U.S. baby name data. I’ve further sub-categorized them by total sums — just in case any of those larger numbers are significant to anyone.
8
The letters in the following baby names add up to 8.
Girl name (8)
Boy name (8)
Bea
Abe
8 via 17
The letters in the following baby names add up to 17, which reduces to eight (1+7=8).
Girl names (8 via 17)
Boy names (8 via 17)
Gia, Bo, Afia, Eabha, Cala
Bo, Mac, Cam, Md, Jeb
8 via 26
The letters in the following baby names add up to 26, which reduces to eight (2+6=8).
Girl names (8 via 26)
Boy names (8 via 26)
Leah, Maci, Jana, Pia, Dua, Gema, Calia, Brea, Cami
Eli, Bear, Bode, Obed, Asaad, Adil
8 via 35
The letters in the following baby names add up to 35, which reduces to eight (3+5=8).
There’s no definitive answer, unfortunately, because various numerological systems exist, and each one has its own interpretation of the number eight. That said, if we look at a couple of modern numerology/astrology websites, we see 8 being described as “successful,” “ambitious,” “organized,” “practical,” and “authoritative.”
We can also look at associations, which are a bit more concrete. Here are some things that are associated with the number 8:
Figure 8
Infinity symbol
Analemma (diagram showing the position of the sun over the course of a year)
Figure-eight knot
Octopus (8 arms)
Spider (8 legs)
8-bit computing
8-track cartridge
Eight-ball (in pool)
Magic 8 Ball (fortune-telling toy)
Eight-ender (perfect score in the sport of curling)
What does the number 8 mean to you? What are your strongest associations with the number?
P.S. To see names with other numerological values, check out the posts for the numbers one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, and nine.
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