How popular is the baby name Carl 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 Carl.

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Popularity of the baby name Carl


Posts that mention the name Carl

Where did the baby name Celynn come from in 1964?

Contestant Celynn McDonald on the TV game show "The Celebrity Game" (Jun. 1964)
Celynn McDonald on “The Celebrity Game“

The name Celynn has only ever appeared in the U.S. baby name data a single time, in 1964:

  • 1966: unlisted
  • 1965: unlisted
  • 1964: 7 baby girls named Celynn [debut]
  • 1963: unlisted
  • 1962: unlisted

Where did it come from?

Television!

A short-lived game show called The Celebrity Game was on TV in the mid-1960s. Here’s how host Carl Reiner explained the show:

We ask our celebrity panel a question on some popular topic that can be answered yes or no. Then our three players each get a chance to pick a star and tell us how they think the star voted.

An episode that aired in June of 1964 featured a contestant named Celynn McDonald (first name pronounced seh-LYN). She was described as “a law student and a perpetual movie fan.”

In Celynn’s episode, the three questions posed to the 9-person celebrity panel (which included Mickey Rooney, Gypsy Rose Lee, and Lee Marvin) were:

  • Do romantic screen heroes tend to make wives satisfied at home?
  • Should a woman marry a man ten years younger than she?
  • Should the United States government subsidize children as they do in France?

Alas, Celynn did not win the game. But her fifteen minutes of fame did shine a spotlight on her unusual name, and this, in turn, increased the usage of the name just enough to boost it into the SSA’s baby name data (which, due to privacy concerns, only includes names given to at least five babies per year).

What are your thoughts on the name Celynn? Would you use it?

Sources: The Celebrity Game – IMDb, SSA

Baby name story: Solander

Solander Island (in the distance)
Solander Island (in the distance)

The small Canadian city of Port Alberni, which is located on Vancouver Island, finally welcomed its first baby of 2023 on the morning of January 4.

Born at West Coast General Hospital to parents Andre-Anne and Joseph Danshin, the baby boy was named Solander Laurent Danshin.

Why “Solander”?

He was named after Solander Island, an ecological reserve off the northwest coast of Vancouver Island. Both his parents work at sea, said Andre-Anne.

“It’s a name that resonates a lot with us,” she said.

The small, rocky island of Solander — which was named in honor of Swedish botanist Daniel Solander (1733-1782), who had been a pupil of Carl Linnaeus — was designated as a reserve in 1971 in order to “protect large colonies of breeding seabirds and their habitat.”

The Swedish surname Solander is made up of the elements sol, meaning “sun” in Swedish (and various other languages), and andros, meaning “man” in Ancient Greek. (Andros is also an element in Andre-Anne’s compound first name.)

What are your thoughts on the name Solander?

P.S. Solander has an older brother named Beaufort.

Sources:

Image: Adapted from Solander Island by Padraic Ryan under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Where did the baby name Ecaterina come from in 1984?

Romanian gymnast Ecaterina Szabo at the 1984 Summer Olympics
Ecaterina Szabo

The name Ecaterina was a one-hit wonder in the U.S. baby name data in 1984:

  • 1986: unlisted
  • 1985: unlisted
  • 1984: 10 baby girls named Ecaterina [debut]
  • 1983: unlisted
  • 1982: unlisted

If you were paying attention to sports that summer, no doubt you’ll recall the source: Ecaterina Szabo, the Romanian gymnast who battled it out with Mary Lou Retton at the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. (Romania was the only Eastern Bloc country that did not boycott the ’84 Games.)

Ecaterina Szabo, 17 years old at the time, was the most successful competitor overall at the 1984 Summer Games, winning four golds and one silver. (In second place was American track and field athlete Carl Lewis.) Mary Lou Retton, who was 16 years old, won one gold, two silvers, and two bronzes.

But what most people remember is Retton coming from behind to beat Szabo in “the big one” — the women’s individual all-around competition — by a mere five-hundredths of a point. (The usage of the baby name Marylou increased in both 1984 and 1985 as a result.)

Ecaterina Szabo, an ethnic Hungarian, was born with the first name Katalin. She told Romanian news site Transylvania Now that her name was changed (from the Hungarian form of Katherine to the Romanian form of Katherine) in order to mask her background:

It happened in 1980 when she participated at the Youth European Championship in Lyon. “This was the place where I arrived as Katalin, and left as Ecaterina,” she remembers. “The name change happened without my knowledge. Actually I didn’t have the chance to realize it, since I never even saw my passport.”

What are your thoughts on the baby name Ecaterina?

P.S. Did you know another one-hit wonder baby name was inspired by a Romanian Olympic gymnast? Check out Comaneci…

Sources:

Image: Screenshot of the 1984 Summer Olympics

Popular baby names in Denmark, 2020

Flag of Denmark
Flag of Denmark

According to Statistics Denmark, the most popular baby names in the country last year were Alma and Alfred.

Here are Denmark’s top 10 girl names and top 10 boy names of 2020:

Girl Names

  1. Alma, 514 baby girls
  2. Agnes, 456
  3. Ella, 448
  4. Freja, 439
  5. Clara, 432 (tie)
  6. Emma, 432 (tie)
  7. Sofia, 423
  8. Karla, 398
  9. Anna, 375
  10. Ellie, 363

Boy Names

  1. Alfred, 520 baby boys
  2. Oscar, 516
  3. Carl, 503 (tie)
  4. Noah, 503 (tie)
  5. William, 497
  6. Oliver, 463
  7. Aksel, 454
  8. Arthur, 453
  9. Valdemar, 432
  10. Lucas, 429

In the girls’ top 10, Ellie replaced Olivia.

In the boys’ top 10, Aksel and Valdemar replaced August and Malthe.

In 2019, the top two names in Denmark were Emma and William.

Sources: Names of newborn children – Statistics Denmark, Alma and Alfred the most popular names of 2020

Image: Adapted from Flag of Denmark (public domain)