How popular is the baby name Dan 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 Dan.

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Popularity of the Baby Name Dan


Posts that Mention the Name Dan

Baby named for Olympic wrestler, becomes Olympic wrestler

Wrestler Gable Dan Steveson at the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo
Gable Dan Steveson

At the 2020 Summer Olympics, in the last few seconds of the men’s freestyle 125kg final, U.S. wrestler Gable Dan Steveson defeated Georgian wrestler Geno Petriashvili to win gold.

A few days earlier, after victory in the semifinal match against Mongolian wrestler Lkhagvagerel Mönkhtöriin, Gable told reporters:

My name is Gable Dan, after Dan Gable. It might have been destiny to reach this spot. Who knows?

Stevenson, who was born in Indiana in 2000, was named after legendary wrestler Dan Gable — a two-time national champion who won Olympic gold in 1972 and went on to become a very successful coach at the University of Iowa.

Though Steveson didn’t attend the University of Iowa (he graduated from the University of Minnesota in 2022), he did mention on Twitter that Iowa’s Carver-Hawkeye arena was his “favorite spot to wrestle.”

What are your thoughts on the name Gable?

Sources:

Image: © 2020 NBC Sports

P.S. The 2020 Games actually took place in 2021, due to Covid.

Top baby names in Japan, 2022

japan

The island country of Japan, located in the northwest Pacific Ocean, welcomes over 800,000 babies every year.

As far as I know, Japan has never released an official set of baby name rankings. But Japan’s top baby names of 2022 might be Himari and Ao, if two unofficial sets of rankings are to be believed.

The two sets of rankings were put out by a pair of Japanese companies that used their own data (i.e., the names of the newborns of their own customers/clients) to guess which baby names were the most popular in Japan last year.

  • Meiji Yasuda Life Insurance Company’s 2022 baby name rankings (in Japanese) account for 8,561 baby girls and 8,952 baby boys born in Japan from January to September, 2022.
  • Benesse Corporation’s 2022 baby name rankings (in Japanese) account for 148,103 baby girls and 149,152 baby boys born in Japan from January 1 to September 27, 2022.

These rankings aren’t exactly representative: the samples are self-selected, the last quarter of the year is entirely omitted, etc. Nevertheless, they’re fun to check out. And I think it’s significant that they agree on the #1 girl name.

Because both companies rank names as they’re written — and each of these written forms tends to have multiple pronunciations — I had to create images of the rankings (because my blogging software can’t handle kanji/kana characters). So, in the images below, the written forms are on the left, and their most common readings(s) are on the right.


Let’s start with Meiji Yasuda’s list.

Girl Names (Meiji)

Top girl names in Japan in 2022, according to Meiji Yasuda Life

(Himari, Hinata, Hina; Rin; Uta; Hina, Haruna; Yuina, Yuna; An, Anzu; Mio, Rei; Yua; Mei; Riko; Sakura; Ema.)

Boy Names (Meiji)

Top boy names in Japan in 2022, according to Meiji Yasuda Life

(Aoi, So, Ao; Nagi, Nagisa; Ren; Haruto, Hinato; Minato; Soma, Fuma; Ao, Aoi; Itsuki, Tatsuki; Yamato; Yuma, Haruma; Dan, Haru.)


And now, Benesse.

Girl Names (Benesse)

Top girl names in Japan in 2022, according to Benesse

(Himari, Rin, Yuina, Mei, Uta, Hina, Aoi, Riko, Tsumugi, Ema.)

Boy Names (Benesse)

Top boy names in Japan in 2022, according to Benesse

(Ao, Haruto, Aoi, Asahi, Ren, Minato, Yuito, Yuma, Hinata, Itsuki.)

Benesse also noted that several tiger-related boy names saw higher usage in 2022, which was a Year of the Tiger according to the Chinese zodiac.

Tiger-related boy names that saw higher usage in Japan in 2022, according to Benesse

Taiga sounds like the English word “tiger,” while Kotaro can include the kanji character that means “tiger.”

Sources:

Image by Svetlana Gumerova from Unsplash

Name quotes #108: Dora, Lola, Reinhold

double quotation mark

Welcome to this month’s batch of name quotes! Here’s what we’ve got this time around…

Talk show host Kelly Ripa’s explanantion of her daughter Lola’s name, via People:

“Lola was supposed to be Sophia, but on the way to the hospital in the taxi cab, the driver was listening to the radio — the 70s station — and ‘Copacabana’ by Barry Manilow was playing,” the mom of three recalled.

“I heard that [lyric], when he said, ‘Her name was Lola,’ and I said to Mark, ‘Lola Consuelos would be a really cool name.’ And he said, ‘If she’s a girl, let’s name her Lola.’ And that was it,” she shared.

From a 1933 article about baby name trends in a newspaper from Queensland, Australia:

THE latest development in public feeling, in Britain, against Defence of the Realm Act is that the name Dora has gone definitely out of favour as a Christian name for girls.

[The U.K.’s restrictive Defence of the Realm Act (DORA) was passed in 1914, at the start of WWI. According to the historical data available at British Baby Names, usage of the baby name Dora does indeed seem to decrease in England and Wales after 1914.]

From the obituary of Reinhold Weege, creator of the TV sitcom Night Court (1984-1992):

In an inside joke during the third season, it was revealed that [character Dan Fielding’s] real first name was Reinhold, but he changed it to Dan out of embarrassment.

From a 2011 article in Discover Magazine about parrots having names:

Parrots, those irrepressible mimics of the animal world, are some of the few creatures known to have individual names: each bird has its own signature call that others use when addressing it and that the bird uses itself in avian “conversation.”

[…]

Dolphins and humans are, so far, the only other members of this select club of animals who use names for individuals. Scientists think this ability is related to the intensely social lives of all three of these creatures.

From Through It All, the autobiography of Christine King Farris (older sister of Martin Luther King, Jr.):

My full name is Willie Christine King. Hardly anyone knows my first name. I am rarely called by it. “Willie” was chosen as a way to pay homage to the Williams side of my family; it was given in tribute to my maternal grandfather, Reverend A. D. Williams.

From the obituary of Nile Kinnick Clarke in the Mercer Island Reporter:

Also in the sports realm, Nile was named after Nile Clarke Kinnick Jr., the 1939 Heisman Trophy winner at the University of Iowa who died in World War II.

From a write-up of a name study conducted by Carnegie Mellon researchers:

As the popularity of one name, say Emily, peaks, parents may decide to forgo that name and pick a similar one, like Emma. By following this strategy, they are instilling in their new daughter a name that is socially acceptable by its similarity to the popular name but will allow her to stand out in the crowd by putting a unique twist on her identity. Many parents may be thinking the same thing and the number of little girls named Emily will decline while those named Emma will increase.

Baby names in the news: Awa, Navjot, Valley

Some recent and not-so-recent baby names from the news…

Awa: A baby girl born in northern Mozambique in October of 2020 while her family was fleeing from jihadists was named Awa, which translates to “suffering” in the local Makhuwa language. (Africanews)

Exam: A baby girl born in Kenya in March of 2021, on one of the days her mother was scheduled to take the Kenya Certificate of Primary Education (KCPE) examination, was named Exam. (KBC)

Margaret: A baby giraffe born at the UK’s largest zoo on December 8, 2020 — the day the first COVID-19 vaccine was given to 90-yr-old Margaret Keenan — was named Margaret. (ZSL)

Najvot: A baby boy adopted by parents in Kerala, India, amid the 2020 lockdown was named Navjot in honor of Thiruvananthapuram District Collector Navjot Khosa, who helped the inter-state adoption happen despite travel restrictions. (New Indian Express)

Nolan: A baby boy born in St. Louis on April 8, 2021 — St. Louis Cardinals opening day — was named Nolan after baseball player Nolan Arenado. The name was chosen just after his parents heard sports broadcaster Dan McLaughlin say (during the 8th inning): “Arenado, a drive, deep left, at the wall! Welcome to St. Louis, Nolan!” (FOX2now)

Sky: A baby boy born aboard a flight from Glennallen, Alaska, to Anchorage in August of 2020 was named Sky Airon. (KTUU)

Valley: A baby girl born in February of 2021 in Louisiana, in the parking lot of a nursing home called Valley View, was named Ariana Valley. (KALB)