How popular is the baby name Camille 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 Camille.

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Popularity of the baby name Camille


Posts that mention the name Camille

Popular baby names in Belgium, 2021

Flag of Belgium
Flag of Belgium

According to data from Statistics Belgium, the country’s most popular baby names last year were Olivia and Noah.

Here are Belgium’s top 50 girl names and top 50 boy names of 2021:

Girl Names

  1. Olivia, 580 baby girls
  2. Emma, 500
  3. Louise, 455
  4. Mila, 435
  5. Alice, 416
  6. Camille, 403
  7. Lina, 394
  8. Sofia, 359
  9. Ella, 352
  10. Juliette, 346
  11. Nora, 342
  12. Mia, 325
  13. Marie, 317
  14. Lucie, 314
  15. Anna, 303
  16. Jade, 296
  17. Elena, 281
  18. Eva, 280
  19. Julia, 279
  20. Noor, 263
  21. Nina, 256
  22. Léa, 252
  23. Victoria, 249
  24. Chloé, 244
  25. Alix, 235
  26. Lou, 232
  27. Elise, 220
  28. Zoé, 215
  29. Giulia, 212
  30. Ellie, 210 (tie)
  31. Luna, 210 (tie)
  32. Liv, 209
  33. Renée, 207
  34. Amélie, 204
  35. Inaya, 202
  36. Rose, 194
  37. Charlotte, 191
  38. Jeanne, 188 (tie)
  39. Lily, 188 (tie)
  40. Lena, 187
  41. Sara, 176
  42. Manon, 171
  43. Julie, 170
  44. Mona, 160
  45. Alba, 159
  46. Livia, 155
  47. Billie, 154 (tie)
  48. Sophia, 154 (tie)
  49. Amira, 146
  50. Clara, 144 (tie)
  51. Stella, 144 (tie)

Boy Names

  1. Noah, 627 baby boys
  2. Arthur, 584
  3. Louis, 558
  4. Liam, 537
  5. Jules, 526
  6. Adam, 474
  7. Lucas, 426
  8. Gabriel, 422
  9. Victor, 416
  10. Oscar, 336
  11. Leon, 310
  12. Mathis, 294 (tie)
  13. Mohamed, 294 (tie)
  14. Finn, 289
  15. Léon, 275
  16. Matteo, 264
  17. Lewis, 251
  18. Hugo, 245
  19. Nathan, 238
  20. Luca, 234
  21. Elias, 225
  22. Raphaël, 223
  23. Théo, 221
  24. Amir, 217 (tie)
  25. Eden, 217 (tie)
  26. Rayan, 209
  27. Lou, 208
  28. Milo, 205
  29. Yanis, 204
  30. Achille, 201
  31. Otis, 194
  32. Sacha, 191 (tie)
  33. Vic, 191 (tie)
  34. Felix, 190
  35. Marcel, 187
  36. Basile, 185
  37. Aaron, 179
  38. Léo, 178
  39. Maurice, 174
  40. Alexander, 173
  41. Maël, 171
  42. Emiel, 168 (tie)
  43. Georges, 168 (tie)
  44. Jack, 167 (tie)
  45. William, 167 (tie)
  46. Emile, 163 (tie)
  47. Vince, 163 (tie)
  48. Samuel, 161
  49. Gaston, 159
  50. Oliver, 158

If Leon and Léon had been counted as a single name, their combined total (585) would have been enough to edge Arthur (584) out of second place on the boys’ list.

And the gender-neutral name Lou managed to pop up on both lists in nearly the same spot: 26th for girls, 27th for boys.

Map of the three regions of Belgium
Belgium’s three regions

The top baby names within each of Belgium’s three regions were…

Girl NamesBoy Names
Flanders
(57.6% of the population)
Language: Dutch
1. Olivia, 328
2. Ella, 303
3. Marie, 275
4. Mila, 266
5. Nora, 261
1. Noah, 399
2. Arthur, 321
3. Jules, 311
4. Leon, 288
5. Louis, 284
Wallonia
(31.8% of pop.)
Language: French/German
1. Emma, 204
2. Olivia, 203
3. Louise, 190
4. Alice, 188 (tie)
5. Lucie, 188 (tie)
1. Gabriel, 266
2. Louis, 235
3. Liam, 233
4. Arthur, 208
5. Jules, 191
Brussels-Capital
(10.6% of pop.)
Languages: Dutch/French
1. Lina, 89
2. Sofia, 83
3. Emma, 60 (tie)
4. Nour, 60 (tie)
5. Olivia, 49
1. Mohamed, 118
2. Adam, 112
3. Gabriel, 82
4. Amir, 70
5. Noah, 62

And here’s a selection of names from the other end of the spectrum — names that were given to just 5 babies each in Belgium last year:

Rare Girl NamesRare Boy Names
Anabia, Believe, Caro, Dea, Elaïa, Fallone, Gaby, Heike, Iluna, Jennifer, Kessy, Lyssia, Mahsa, Nihal, Otice, Puck, Queen, Ramla, Siloé, Toos, Vlera, Wassila, Yseult, ZuriAloys, Brandon, Celle, Doruk, Erion, Fedde, Gustav, Hazar, Ilyass, Jip, Karsten, Lothar, Maksim, Nellis, Obi, Paulin, Qays, Riff, Silvio, Tille, Vidar, Wiebe, Yavuz, Zjef

(I’m a little surprised that as many as 5 baby girls in Belgium got the English word “believe” as their first name. I wonder if something specific was influencing that usage…?)

This time around, Belgium also highlighted the girl and boy names that saw the largest increases and decreases in usage over the last decade (2011-2021). The top 5 in each category were…

  • Girl names
    • Largest increases: Alba, Ellie, Ellis, Alya, Cilou
    • Largest decreases: Lisa, Laura, Julie, Lotte, Anaïs
  • Boy names
    • Largest increases: Georges, Lio, Gaston, Otis, Lyam
    • Largest decreases: Maxime, Thomas, Simon, Wout, Nathan

Finally, here’s a link to Belgium’s 2020 rankings, if you’d like to compare.

Sources: First names for boys and girls | STATBEL, Demographics of Belgium – Wikipedia

Image: Adapted from Flag of Belgium (public domain)
Map: Adapted from Regions of Belgium by Ssolbergj under CC BY 3.0.

Popular and unique baby names in Quebec (Canada), 2021

Flag of Quebec
Flag of Quebec

According to Retraite Québec, the most popular baby names in the Canadian province of Quebec last year were Emma and Noah.

Here are Quebec’s top 50 girl names and top 50 boy names of 2021:

Girl Names

  1. Emma, 521 baby girls
  2. Olivia, 519
  3. Alice, 508
  4. Florence, 498
  5. Charlie, 488
  6. Livia, 473
  7. Charlotte, 465
  8. Lea, 462
  9. Romy, 357
  10. Zoe, 344
  11. Clara, 335
  12. Juliette, 331
  13. Rosalie, 327
  14. Beatrice, 326
  15. Rose, 322
  16. Chloe, 314
  17. Eva, 312 (tie)
  18. Sofia, 312 (tie)
  19. Mia, 290
  20. Mila, 283
  21. Victoria, 253
  22. Jade, 249
  23. Julia, 245
  24. Leonie, 230
  25. Maeva, 221 (tie)
  26. Raphaelle, 221 (tie)
  27. Jeanne, 200
  28. Camille, 194
  29. Amelia, 193
  30. Flavie, 187
  31. Ophelie, 179
  32. Elizabeth, 177
  33. Elena, 176
  34. Adele, 164 (tie)
  35. Eleonore, 164 (tie)
  36. Sophia, 157
  37. Jasmine, 145
  38. Laurence, 144 (tie)
  39. Lexie, 144 (tie)
  40. Alicia, 143
  41. Lily, 139
  42. Oceane, 137
  43. Ellie, 136
  44. Sarah, 129
  45. Anna, 125 (3-way tie)
  46. Flora, 125 (3-way tie)
  47. Simone, 125 (3-way tie)
  48. Noelie, 124 (tie)
  49. Sophie, 124 (tie)
  50. Maelie, 123

Boy Names

  1. Noah, 717 baby boys
  2. William, 709
  3. Thomas, 645
  4. Leo, 622
  5. Liam, 618
  6. Jacob, 529
  7. Nathan, 519
  8. Arthur, 508
  9. Edouard, 499
  10. Felix, 484
  11. Logan, 476
  12. Emile, 465 (tie)
  13. Louis, 465 (tie)
  14. Charles, 408
  15. Raphael, 396
  16. James, 366
  17. Arnaud, 362 (tie)
  18. Theo, 362 (tie)
  19. Victor, 360
  20. Adam, 337
  21. Elliot, 332
  22. Alexis, 329
  23. Henri, 308
  24. Jules, 306
  25. Benjamin, 301
  26. Samuel, 290
  27. Gabriel, 289
  28. Milan, 282 (tie)
  29. Olivier, 282 (tie)
  30. Laurent, 280
  31. Theodore, 277
  32. Nolan, 274
  33. Jackson, 271
  34. Jayden, 266
  35. Lucas, 256
  36. Antoine, 245
  37. Zack, 239
  38. Eloi, 230 (tie)
  39. Ethan, 230 (tie)
  40. Matheo, 212
  41. Axel, 204
  42. Jake, 203
  43. Eli, 198
  44. Mathis, 191
  45. Hubert, 190
  46. Xavier, 177
  47. Zachary, 176
  48. Leonard, 171
  49. Loic, 170
  50. Mayson, 166

In the girls’ top 10, Zoe replaced Clara.

In the boys’ top 10, Felix replaced Logan.

And here are some of the baby names that were bestowed just once in Quebec last year:

Unique Girl NamesUnique Boy Names
Auxane, Beaulieu, Celtina, Dulcinee, Ephelina, Freticia, Gamaelle, Hestia, Isalie, Jophina, Kautjaq, Lasiala, Milaloup, Nausicaa, Oncy, Protea, Qulliq, Riziki, Sensitiva, Timmiak, Uzia, Violaine, Waapikun, Xeia, Yzea, ZoonaAmenzo, Blinken, Clydirk, Dawensky, Eliodore, Fritzner, Ghiss, Hulkson, Ikuagasak, Jackary, Kaulder, Lafleche, Mclovin, Nickford, Otsoa, Piponik, Qianli, Raynloc, Stratos, Trupt, Ulys, Vinicius, Wendrick, Xakhan, Yamsongo, Zoric

Some possible explanations/associations for a few of the above:

  • Beaulieu means “beautiful place” in French.
  • Kaulder was a character in the movie The Last Witch Hunter (2015).
  • McLovin was a name used on a fake ID in the movie Superbad (2007).
  • Milaloup looks like a combination of the name Mila and the French word loup, meaning “wolf.”
  • Nausicaa was a character in Homer’s Odyssey.
  • Qulliq refers to a seal-oil/whale blubber lamp used by the Inuit.
  • Timmiak refers to a duck or a goose in Inuktitut.

In 2020, the top names in Quebec were Olivia and Liam.

Sources: List of Baby Names – Retraite Québec, Noah and Emma most popular baby names in Quebec in 2021

Image: Adapted from Flag of Quebec (public domain)

Popular baby names in Paris, 2021

Flag of France
Flag of France

According to Paris Data, the most popular baby names in the capital of France last year were Louise and Gabriel.

Here are the city’s top 50 girl names and top 50 boy names of 2021:

Girl Names

  1. Louise, 217 baby girls
  2. Alma, 207
  3. Emma, 178
  4. Adèle, 151 (tie)
  5. Chloé, 151 (tie)
  6. Anna, 150
  7. Olivia, 142
  8. Eva, 138 (tie)
  9. Jeanne, 138 (tie)
  10. Rose, 133
  11. Gabrielle, 131
  12. Alice, 129
  13. Romy, 125
  14. Ava, 124
  15. Léa, 121 (tie)
  16. Victoria, 121 (tie)
  17. Joséphine, 119 (tie)
  18. Zoé, 119 (tie)
  19. Iris, 118
  20. Nina, 117
  21. Charlotte, 115 (tie)
  22. Lina, 115 (tie)
  23. Lou, 113
  24. Ella, 104 (tie)
  25. Sofia, 104 (tie)
  26. Victoire, 102
  27. Sarah, 101
  28. Agathe, 98 (tie)
  29. Charlie, 98 (tie)
  30. Alix, 96
  31. Juliette, 95
  32. Jade, 93
  33. Inès, 89
  34. Suzanne, 88
  35. Julia, 86
  36. Léonie, 83
  37. Margaux, 82
  38. Mila, 79
  39. Diane, 78
  40. Ambre, 77 (tie)
  41. Fatoumata, 77 (tie)
  42. Alba, 75
  43. Héloïse, 73
  44. Mia, 72 (tie)
  45. Romane, 72 (tie)
  46. Giulia, 69
  47. Margot, 68
  48. Nour, 67
  49. Apolline, 66
  50. Maya, 64 (tie)
  51. Noa, 64 (tie)

Boy Names

  1. Gabriel, 357 baby boys
  2. Adam, 250
  3. Louis, 245
  4. Raphaël, 233
  5. Arthur, 227
  6. Noah, 191
  7. Isaac, 187
  8. Joseph, 178 (tie)
  9. Mohamed, 178 (tie)
  10. Léon, 171
  11. Léo, 166
  12. Paul, 156
  13. Victor, 155
  14. Lucas, 152
  15. Gaspard, 149
  16. Alexandre, 134 (tie)
  17. Hugo, 134 (tie)
  18. Augustin, 131
  19. Sacha, 124
  20. Aaron, 122
  21. Oscar, 121
  22. Jules, 120
  23. Liam, 119
  24. Ibrahim, 117
  25. Noé, 114
  26. Samuel, 113
  27. Naël, 108
  28. Ismaël, 104
  29. Côme, 101
  30. Auguste, 100
  31. Basile, 98 (tie)
  32. Maël, 98 (tie)
  33. Antoine, 94
  34. Maxime, 92
  35. Eliott, 91 (tie)
  36. Marceau, 91 (tie)
  37. Martin, 90 (tie)
  38. Marius, 90 (tie)
  39. Camille, 89 (3-way tie)
  40. Nathan, 89 (3-way tie)
  41. Timothée, 89 (3-way tie)
  42. Simon, 86
  43. Charles, 84 (tie)
  44. Axel, 84 (tie)
  45. Andrea, 82 (tie)
  46. Octave, 82 (tie)
  47. Léonard, 80 (tie)
  48. Eden, 80 (tie)
  49. Félix, 78 (tie)
  50. Ulysse, 78 (tie)

And here’s a selection of names from lower down in the rankings (which includes all names given to at least five babies per gender, per year).

Parisian Girl NamesParisian Boy Names
Garance (53 girls), Nelya (30), Ysée (23), Jennah (23), Nava (15), Athénaïs (12), Calypso (8), Alizée (5), Mazarine (5)Henri (42 boys), Kylian (25), Dario (14), Archibald (11), Zéphyr (11), Pacôme (8), Tancrède (8), Enguerrand (7), Orphée (6)

In 2020, the top two names in Paris were also Louise and Gabriel.

Sources: Liste des prénoms – Paris Data, Découvrez le top 10 des prénoms donnés en 2021 à Paris

Image: Adapted from Flag of France (public domain)

Name quotes #104: Shanaya, Bluzette, Doug

double quotation mark

Time for the latest batch of name quotes!

From Sanjana Ramachandran’s recent essay “The Namesakes“:

Shanaya Patel’s story, in more ways than one, encapsulated an India opening up to the world. In March 2000, Shanaya’s parents were at a café in Vadodara, Gujarat, when some Shania Twain tunes came on: she was also the artist who had been playing when her father saw her mother for the first time, “during their whole arranged-marriage-thing.” Finally, after eight months of “baby” and “munna,” Shanaya’s parents had found a name for her.

But “to make it different,” Shanaya’s parents changed the spelling of her name slightly. “Before me, all my cousins were named from this or that religious book,” she said. “When my parents didn’t want to go down that road, the elders were all ‘How can you do this!’—but my parents fought for it. There was a small controversy in the family.”

(Her essay also inspired me to write this post about the name Sanjana!)

About the “naming” of a Native American man who was discovered in California in 1911, from a 1996 UC Berkeley news release:

Under pressure from reporters who wanted to know the stranger’s name, [anthropologist] Alfred Kroeber called him “Ishi,” which means “man” in Yana. Ishi never uttered his real name.

“A California Indian almost never speaks his own name,” wrote Kroeber’s wife, “using it but rarely with those who already know it, and he would never tell it in reply to a direct question.”

About street names in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Williamsburg, from the book Names of New York (2021) by Joshua Jelly-Schapiro:

Clymer, Ellery, Hart; Harrison, Hooper, Heyward, Hewes; Ross, Rush, Rutledge, Penn — they’re all names belonging to one or another of those fifty-six men who scrawled their letters at the Declaration [of Independence]’s base. So are Taylor and Thornton, Wythe and Whipple.

[…]

[Keap Street’s] name does not match that of one of the Declaration’s signers, but it tries to: “Keap” is apparently a misrendering of the surname of the last man to leave his mark on it: Thomas McKean of Pennsylvania, whose name’s illegibility was perhaps due to his having rather less space to scrawl it by the time the document reached him than John Hancock did.

From a 2008 CNN article about unusual names:

“At times, for the sake of avoiding an uncomfortable conversation or throwing someone off guard, I answer to the names of ‘Mary’ or ‘Kelly’,” says Bluzette Martin of West Allis, Wisconsin. At restaurants, “the thought of putting an employee through the pain of guessing how to spell and pronounce ‘Bluzette’ just isn’t worth it to me.”

Martin was named after “Bluzette,” an up-tempo jazz waltz written by Jean “Toots” Thielemans. Despite her daily problems with this name, it certainly has its perks, like when she met Thielemans in 1987 at a club in Los Angeles. “When I met [him], he thanked my mother,” she says.

(Here’s “Bluesette” (vid) by Thielemans, who was Belgian.)

From a 2009 article about Microsoft executive J Allard in Boston University’s alumni magazine Bostonia:

Allard still loves video games (his all-time favorite is “Robotron”). And even his name (legally changed from James) is an homage to computers. In the late 1980s, he explains, “it was my log-in on all of the computer systems at school, and it stuck.”

From a BBC article about Doug Bowser becoming president of Nintendo of America in 2019:

In what is surely one of the most charming cases of nominative determinism ever, it has been announced the new head of Nintendo of America will be a man named Doug Bowser.

Bowser, as Nintendo fans will know all too well, has long been Super Mario’s main nemesis — a foe who, for more than three decades now, routinely kidnapped Mario’s girlfriend, Princess Peach.

Mr. Bowser will take over in April from retiring Reggie Fils-Aime, a highly popular figure among Nintendo fans.

“With a name like Bowser, who better to hold the keys to the Nintendo castle?” Mr. Fils-Aime said about his successor in a video message posted on Twitter on Thursday.

From a 1942 item in Time magazine about ‘Roberto’ being used as a fascist greeting:

Last week the authorities ordered 18 Italian-Americans excluded from the San Francisco military area as dangerous to security — the first such action against white citizens. The wonder was that it was not done earlier: everybody heard about the goings on in the North Beach Italian colony. Fascists there used to say RoBerTo as a greeting — Ro for Rome, Ber for Berlin, To for Tokyo. Italy sent teachers, books and medals for the Italian schools. Mussolini won a popularity contest hands down over Franklin Roosevelt.

From an AP news story about the origin of Armand Hammer’s name:

Industrialist Armand Hammer often said he was named after Armand Duval, the hero in Alexandre Dumas’ play “Camille.”

But he conceded later that his father, a socialist, also had in mind the arm-and-hammer symbol of the Socialist Labor Party.

For years, people erroneously thought Hammer was connected to the company that makes Arm & Hammer baking soda.

From an essay about Island Cemetery (on Block Island, in Rhode Island) by Martha Ball:

The cemetery, our own City on a Hill, has always been a place of enchantment, holding stones lacking uniformity even within the same lot, bearing names alien to our time; Philamon Galusha, Icivilli, Darius. It is enhanced by an awareness of the sheer physical accomplishment it embodies, a steep slope terraced long before we had today’s array of earth moving equipment.

[Neither Darius Rucker nor I would agree that the name Darius is “alien to our time.” Looking over the other names at Island Cemetery, I saw all the expected Biblical entries (Peleg, Obed, Barzilla; Zilpah, Huldah, Hepzebah), plenty of fanciful feminines (Lucretia, Cordelia, Sophronia), and a few references to current events: a Martin VanBuren born in 1839, a Cassius Clay born in 1854, an Elsworth (middle name) born in 1861, an Ambrose Everett born in 1862, and a Ulysses born in 1868.]

From an article about early Soviet film director Dziga Vertov at Russia Beyond:

Vertov’s real name was David Kaufman, which unambiguously points to his Jewish origin. But the desire of the talented youth from Bialystok (at the time part of the Russian Empire, today Poland) to change his surname upon arrival in Moscow was unlikely to have been due to anti-Semitism — in the 1920s it was not as developed as in the 1950s. Vertov, like many avant-garde artists, probably just chose a new name to herald “a new life.”

In Ukrainian dziga means whirligig, spinning top, while vertov comes from the verb vertet (to spin). The two form something like “the spinning whirligig,” a name that was entirely fitting for the man who bore it.

From an article in The Economist about the unusual names of Tabasco, Mexico:

[The unusual names] impressed Amado Nervo, a Mexican poet. In every family “there is a Homer, a Cornelia, a Brutus, a Shalmanasar and a Hera,” he wrote in “The Elysian Fields of Tabasco”, which was published in 1896. Rather than scour the calendar for saints’ names, he wrote, parents of newborns “search for them in ‘The Iliad’, ‘The Aeneid’, the Bible and in the history books”. Andrés Iduarte, a Tabascan essayist of the 20th century, concurred. Tabasco is a place “of Greek names and African soul”, he wrote, endorsing the cliche that the state has similarities with Africa.

From a 2014 article in Vogue about 1950s fashion model Dovima:

Dovima, born Dorothy Virginia Margaret Juba, would have been 87 today. She hailed from Jackson Heights, Queens, and was purportedly discovered in 1949 when she strolled out of an Automat near the Vogue offices. The name Dovima wasn’t thought up by a canny publicist, if was concocted by Dorothy herself, invented for an imaginary playmate during a lonely childhood when she was bedridden with rheumatic fever.

(Dovima was the first single-name fashion model. She did legally change her name from Dorothy to Dovima at some point, according to the records, and a handful of baby girls born in the late ’50s were named after her, e.g., Dovima Marie Ayers, b. 1959, VT.)

P.S. “Louvima” is another three-in-one name I’ve blogged about…