How popular is the baby name Edgar 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 Edgar.
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The curious name Nyoka (pronounced nye-OH-kah) first appeared in the U.S. baby name data in 1941. Usage of the name peaked two years later:
1946: 20 baby girls named Nyoka
1945: 26 baby girls named Nyoka
1944: 28 baby girls named Nyoka
1943: 60 baby girls named Nyoka [peak: ranked 1,034th]
1942: 45 baby girls named Nyoka
1941: 5 baby girls named Nyoka [debut]
1940: unlisted
1939: unlisted
Where did this one come from? A character named Nyoka who appeared in two 15-part movie serials in the early ’40s. In the first serial, Jungle Girl (1941), Nyoka was played by Frances Gifford. In the second serial, Perils of Nyoka (1942), she was played by Kay Aldridge.
The serials were based (very loosely) upon an Edgar Rice Burroughs novel from a decade earlier called Jungle Girl. In the book, the titular jungle girl was named Fou-tan, not Nyoka.
The character also inspired a comic book series called Nyoka the Jungle Girl. Issue #1 came out in 1942.
Her comment reminded me that I’d actually seen advertisements for that very booklet in old magazines. In fact, I was able find four full-page examples in Life.
The earliest ad (click to enlarge) featured the names Henry, Valerie, Caesar, and Jason:
The next one had Edgar, Conrad, Hortense, and Moses:
The third featured Vivian, Maxwell, Brian, and Albert:
And the final ad had Clementine, Dexter, Jasper, and Louise:
Which of these sets of names do you prefer? Why?
Sources:
Advertisement for Ethyl Corporation. Life 19 Oct. 1942: 9.
Advertisement for Ethyl Corporation. Life 7 Jun. 1943: 3.
Advertisement for Ethyl Corporation. Life 19 Jul. 1943: 1.
Advertisement for Ethyl Corporation. Life 30 Aug. 1943: 1.
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.
Kansas newspaper editor Edgar Watson “E. W.” Howe published his first novel, The Story of a Country Town, in his own newspaper, the Atchison Daily Globe, in 1883.
Encyclopedia Britannica said the novel “was the first realistic novel of Midwestern small-town life,” but an early 20th-century review said that the realism wasn’t, in fact, very realistic at all: “[T]he test of veracity fails in the unrelieved gloom of the story, which is bereft of all sunshine and joyousness, and even of all sense of relation to happier things.”
One of the characters in the novel was pretty-but-shallow Mateel Shepherd, the daughter of a Methodist minister (named Rev. Goode Shepherd, naturally).
E. W. Howe must have liked the name “Mateel” quite a bit, because he named one of his children Mateel in 1883.
Readers must have like it, too, becase the number of U.S. babies named Mateel rose in the 1880s and was at its highest from the 1890s to the 1910s, judging by the records I’ve seen.
But the rare name Mateel didn’t appear in the U.S. baby name data until 1927, and it only stuck around for a single year:
1929: unlisted
1928: unlisted
1927: 6 baby girls named Mateel [debut]
1926: unlisted
1925: unlisted
Why?
Well, Mateel Howe went on to become a writer like her father. Her career seems to have peaked with her debut novel, Rebellion, which won the Dodd, Mead & Co. and Pictorial Review “First Novel Prize” of $10,000 in 1927.*
What was Rebellion about? Essentially, the book was about “the difficulties of a daughter living with a depressed, authoritative and demanding father.” (Hm…)
Though both Edgar and Mateel publicly denied that the characters and conflict were inspired by real life, Edgar cut Mateel out of his will soon after the book was published. Here’s how Time put it:
Left. By Editor-Author Ed Howe, an estate valued at $200,000; in Atchison, Kans. To Society Editor Nellie Webb of his Globe, he left $1,500. To Niece Adelaide Howe he left $50,000. To Sons Eugene Alexander and James Pomeroy he left the remainder except for $1, which went to Daughter Mateel Howe Farnham who in 1927 won a $10,000 prize for Rebellion, a novel in which she satirized her father.
Old-timey drama aside, I’m still left wondering about the name Mateel. Did E. W. Howe create it for the character, or discover it somewhere? (I do see a couple of early Mateels in Louisiana. “Cloteal” was often used for Clotilde there, so I wonder if “Mateel” arose as a form of Matilde…?)
“The Story of a Country Town.” (Review.) The Library of the World’s Best Literature. New York: Warner Library Co., 1917.
*The very same year, author Mazo de la Rochealso won $10,000 in a novel-writing contest…
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