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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Popularity of the baby name Edgar


Posts that mention the name Edgar

Where did the baby name Medgar come from in 1963?

Civil rights activist Medgar Evers (1925-1963)
Medgar Evers

Medgar Evers was an African-American civil rights activist from Mississippi.

On the morning of June 12, 1963, Medgar was assassinated by a white supremacist in front of his own home. He was just 37. Left behind were his wife and three young children (Darrell, Reena and James).

Not coincidentally, the baby name Medgar appeared in the U.S. baby name data for the very first time in 1963. It was the top boy-name debut that year, in fact.

  • 1965: 8 baby boys named Medgar
  • 1964: 13 baby boys named Medgar
  • 1963: 25 baby boys named Medgar [debut]
  • 1962: unlisted
  • 1961: unlisted

The name remained on the list for two more years, then disappeared again. (Spelling variant Medger appeared on the list from 1963 to 1964.)

Evers was named for his great-grandfather Medgar Wright. “The derivation of the name Medgar is unknown, though it was possibly a variation of Edgar.”

Source: Morris, Willie. The Ghosts of Medgar Evers: A Tale of Race, Murder, Mississippi, and Hollywood. New York: Random House, 1998.

Unique baby name: Suffrage

Suffrage Adelia VanHook was born in North Carolina in 1864.

So far, she’s the only U.S.-born person I know of with the name Suffrage. (“Suffrage” refers to the right to vote.)

Suffrage’s father had fought for the Confederacy during the Civil War. This suggests to me that her name is a reference to women’s suffrage, not to black suffrage.

That’s just a guess, though. Is anyone out there a descendant who could tell me the real story behind Suffrage’s name?

P.S. Suffrage had siblings named Charles, Carey, Charlotte, Edgar, Isaac and Robert.

Edward Gorey names: Basil, Neville, Zillah

Edward Gorey book cover

Author Edward Gorey, born on February 22, 1925, would have been 86 today. To celebrate his birthday, let’s check out the names he used in his most famous book, The Gashlycrumb Tinies (1963):

Boy NamesGirl Names
Basil
Desmond
Ernest
George
Hector
James
Leo
Neville
Quentin
Titus
Victor
Xerxes
Yorick		Amy
Clara
Fanny
Ida
Kate
Maud
Olive
Prue
Rhoda
Susan
Una
Winnie
Zillah

He used interesting (sometimes odd) names in his many other books/stories as well, such as Ortenzia, Gertrúdis, Jasper, Ambrogio, Herakleitos, Agnes and Basil in The Blue Aspic (1968), Embley and Yewbert in The Epiplectic Bicycle (1969), Lambert, Amanda, Augustus, Emily and Neville in The Dwindling Party (1982), and Theoda in The Tuning Fork (1983).

Do you happen to own anything by Gorey? If so, please comment with a few character names!

Image: Cover of The Gashlycrumb Tinies by Edward Gorey

English baby names, after the Norman Conquest

William the Conqueror depicted on the Bayeux Tapestry
William (“Willelm”) the Conqueror

I recently came across a BBC article that described how the Norman Conquest drastically changed naming practices in England. Anglo-Saxon names like Aethelred, Eadric, and Leofric were soon replaced by Norman names like William, Robert, and Henry following the 11th-century invasion, which was led by William the Conqueror.

Here’s a quote from the article by English historian Robert Bartlett:

The ruling elite set the fashion and soon William was the most common male name in England, even among peasants. A lot of people changed their names because they wanted to pass in polite society – they didn’t want to be mistaken for a peasant, marked out with an Anglo-Saxon name.

And here are some more details regarding the names, from a later article in The Telegraph:

In Peter Ackroyd’s Foundation, the author notes that on an English farm in 1114 the workers were listed as being called Soen, Rainald, Ailwin, Lemar, Godwin, Ordric, Alric, Saroi, Ulviet and Ulfac. By the end of the century all these names had disappeared.

Because the Normans had conquered England half a century earlier, all these men were easily identifiable as Anglo-Saxons just by their names.

[…]

Of the old English names, only Alfred, Edmund, Edwin and Edgar survived, while Edward thrived, largely thanks to the cult of Edward the Confessor.

The author also mentioned that, per Ackroyd, “a boy from Whitby was recorded as changing his name from Tostig to William because he was being bullied” at the beginning of the 12th century.

And, in case you were wondering about female names, here’s a quote by English historian David Hey:

After the Norman Conquest the personal names that had been popular with the Anglo-Saxons and the Vikings fell out of favour. Some of the names favoured by the Normans were female equivalents of male names, e.g. Joan, Jane, Janet from John, or Patricia, Petra, and Paula from Patrick, Peter, and Paul. Others were biblical names or the names of saints. Joan and Agnes were first recorded in England in 1189, Catherine in 1196, Mary in 1203, Elizabeth in 1205, and Anne in 1218.

Two more female names favored by the Normans were Alice and Matilda.

Sources:

Image: Bayeux Tapestry