How popular is the baby name Curtis 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 Curtis.

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Popularity of the baby name Curtis


Posts that mention the name Curtis

Holiday baby name: Happy New Year

Christmas tree decorations

Happy New Year, everyone!

Time for the first post of 2013.

And my question is: Have any babies ever been named after the New Year?

The answer is yes.

Most notably, at least seven people have been named Happy New Year:

  • Happy Newyear Boor, female, born in 1926 in Pennsylvania
  • Happy New Year Dennis, female, born in 1920 in South Africa
  • Happy New Year Grierson, born in 1896 in Oregon
  • Happy New Year Kauakahi, female, born circa 1906 in Hawaii
  • Happy New Year Kapahu, male, born circa 1907 in Hawaii
  • Happy Newyear Kerwenzee, female, born 1877 in Ontario
  • Happy New Year Ribs, male, born circa 1912 in South Dakota

Several hundred others have simply been named New Year.

The earliest examples I’ve seen come from the 1600s:

  • Newyear Dale, male, baptized on January 6, 1675, in York, England.
  • Newyear Harrison, male, baptized on January 2, 1687, in York, England.
  • New Year Carlile, female, baptized on January 12, 1690, in Cumberland, England
  • New Years Mitchinson, male, baptized on December 31, 1691, in Cumberland, England
  • New Year Ireland, male, baptized on February 5, 1694, in York, England

Here are three more from the 1700s:

  • New Year Dowthwait, male, baptized on January 1, 1731 in York, England
  • New Year Prudget, male, baptized on January 15, 1737, in Suffolk, England
  • Hannah New Year Chamberlain, female, baptized on January 7, 1759 in Northampton, England

And three more from the 1800s:

  • William New Year Sadler, male, baptized on January 2, 1819, in Norfolk, England.
  • Frances New Year Tobin, female, born on December 31, 1872, in Minneapolis, Minnesota
  • New Year Bowman, female, born on January 1, 1881, in Ontario, Canada
William New Year Sadler
William New Year Sadler (in the Norfolk parish register)

And three more in the 1900s:

  • Columbus New Year Clanton, male, born on January 1, 1900, in Alabama
  • Curtis New Year Cooper, male, born on January 1, 1905, in Texas
  • New Year Bell Sunday, female, born on January 1, 1912
  • New Year Mahu, male, born circa 1916 in Hawaii

The most recent New Year I’ve spotted was born in Micronesia in 2002. (The most recent U.S. New Year I’ve seen was born in 1930.)

[More holiday baby names: Christmas Eve, Merry Christmas, Christmas Day, Christmas Carol, Christmas Tree]

Image: Adapted from Bellagio Christmas tree by Bert Kaufmann under CC BY-SA 2.0.

Barbara Gale: The first hurricane-inspired baby name?

hurricane

In 1950, the United States Weather Bureau started naming Atlantic hurricanes and tropical storms.

The initial names came from a radio alphabet that began Able, Baker, Charlie, Dog, Easy, Fox and George. Because the alphabet happened to include several human names, you could say the first Atlantic storms that were “named” were the Charlies and Georges of 1950-1952.

It wasn’t until three years later that the USWB starting using human names exclusively. In 1953, it replaced the phonetic alphabet with a list of female names. (Male names weren’t thrown into the mix until 1979.)

The first storm with a female name was Tropical Storm Alice — the first storm of the 1953 storm season. I couldn’t find any babies named after Alice, but I did find one named after the second storm, Hurricane Barbara.

Hurricane Barbara traveled up the Eastern seaboard in mid-August. It struck the Outer Banks (islands off the North Carolina coast) on August 13. That night, a baby girl born in New Bern, N.C., to Mr. and Mrs. N. E. Ward was named Barbara Gale.

There were six other named storms (Carol, Dolly, Edna, Florence, Gail and Hazel) that season, but I could only find a namesake for one of them — Florence.

Hurricane Florence struck the Florida panhandle on September 26. Earlier that day, a baby born in Crestview, Florida, to Mr. and Mrs. Curtis Holt was named Sandra Florence.

Since 1953, many more babies — hundreds, probably — have been named for Atlantic hurricanes. Hurricane-inspired baby names I’ve written about here include Hazel (1954), Alicia (1983), Elena (1985), Gloria (1985), Andrew (1992) and Isabel (2003).

P.S. One of the things that helped popularize the idea of naming hurricanes in the first place was George R. Stewart’s book Storm (1941), which also had an influence on the baby name Mariah.

Sources:

Image (Hurricane Elena) by NASA

Baby names needed: Boy and girl names for Beatrix’s twin siblings

A reader named Marissa, who has a daughter named Beatrix Penelope (nn Bea), is expecting twins–one boy, one girl. She’s got their middle names narrowed down (Anthony or Alexander for the baby boy, Daphne or Jillian for the baby girl) but she’d like some help with their first names.

Here’s what she’s looking for in a boy name:

For the boy I’d like names that are two syllables long and start and end in a consonant. So far I like Robert, Patrick, Daniel and Fabian. The only one he likes is Fabian, but we’re still not sure.

And here’s what she’s looking for in a girl name:

For the girl I’d like names that are three or four syllables long, and start and end in a vowel. So far I like Anastasia, Ophelia, Elena and Ursula, but he likes none of them.

The babies’ last name will sound something like Thisbe.

Here are some of the boy names I came up with:

Calvin
Clement
Chester
Conrad
Curtis
David
Declan
Dexter
Duncan
Felix		Franklin
Holden
Howard
Jasper
Kenneth
Lincoln
Linus
Lucas
Malcolm
Martin		Maxwell
Miles
Mitchell
Nathan
Nelson
Nigel
Nolan
Philip
Raymond
Reuben		Roland
Roman
Silas
Simon
Stuart
Thomas
Victor
Vincent
William
Winston

And here are some ideas for the girl name:

Acantha
Adela
Adelina
Adriana
Agatha
Alexandra
Alexina
Alicia
Allegra
Althea		Amelia
Annabella
Andrea
Angela
Antonia
Arabella
Araminta
Athena
Augusta
Aurelia		Aurora
Azalea
Eleanora
Eliana
Elisa
Eloisa
Estella
Eugenia
Eulalia
Imelda		Iona
Irena/Irina
Isabella
Isidora
Octavia
Odelia
Odessa
Olivia
Olympia
Ottilia

Which of the above do you like best with Beatrix? (And which ones make the best boy/girl pairings, do you think?)

What other names would you suggest to Marissa?

Baby name needed: Boy name that’s familiar, yet uncommon

A reader named Rachel is expecting a baby boy. She says:

We had two girls’ names that I adored — Jane and Marjorie. Both of these are very uncommon (400s for Jane, not in top 1000 for Marjorie!) yet are utterly familiar (and unpretentious).

I am completely unable to find a boys’ name that fits that bill. All of the familiar, classic names are common. All of the uncommon names make me fear trendiness; few have that classic simplicity.

To add another wrinkle, if possible we’d like to honor a relative with an S-name. The only two I’ve found that I like so far are Samuel (but so common) and Silas (uncommon, but maybe trying too hard?) Other contenders are Henry and Edmund.

How funny — as soon as I read that second paragraph, the name Henry popped into my head.

I don’t think Silas is necessarily one of those “trying too hard”-types of names. (Unlike, say, Ptolemy.) But it will sound more natural in some areas than in others. Are future playmates going to have names like Victoria and Robert, or names like Jayden and Kayla? That could make a huge difference to a boy named Silas.

Here are a few other S-names that might be tempting (along with current rankings, for those in the top 1,000):

  • Simon (261st)
  • Solomon (429th)
  • Stanley (653rd)
  • Stanton
  • Stuart/Stewart
  • Sylvan
  • Sylvester

And, along with Edmund and Henry, here are some non-S-names that could work:

Antony (895)
Bernard (940)
Carl (490)
Chester
Clifford
Curtis (380)
Duncan (717)
Eugene (691)
Francis (656)
Franklin (467)
Frederick (523)
Gerald (603)
Gerard
Giles
Harvey		Howard (903)
Jerome (616)
Lane (319)
Leonard (621)
Lewis (640)
Matthias (772)
Milton (923)
Morris
Otis
Percy
Philip (378)
Roger (463)
Roscoe
Victor (111)
Walter (393)

What other names would you suggest to Rachel?

Update: The baby is here! Scroll down to find out what name Rachel chose.