How popular is the baby name Jeremy 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 Jeremy.
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Early in the 2010s, I published a list of the top debut names per year. In the middle of the 2010s, I published a list of the top one-hit wonder names per year and noted that four names made both lists: Narice, Saford, Gevan, and Jefre.
A few months after putting up the second list, I covered Saford. But I didn’t write about any of the other names until last week’s post on Gevan. After that one, I decided that it was time to finally post about the other two, so today we’ll do one and next week we’ll look at the other.
Out of the four names, Jefre had the most impressive debut:
1963: unlisted
1962: unlisted
1961: 21 baby boys named Jefre [debut]
1960: unlisted
1959: unlisted
It appeared right around the time the name Jeffrey was at peak usage, so it would be easy to write off Jefre as a spelling variant of then-stylish Jeffrey.
But there’s more to the story.
Actor Jeremy Slate (birth name: Robert Bullard Perham) was one of the stars of the short-lived TV show The Aquanauts (1960-1961), about a pair of divers in Southern California.
One Sunday in mid-July, 1961, newspapers across the country ran a story about the swimming habits of Jeremy’s young family, which consisted of his wife Beverly and their four children: Jamie (girl), Jason, Jeremy Jr., and Jefre. It wasn’t long — just two pages — but it included two big photographs, both featuring eight-year-old Jefre.
Ironically, the piece came out about a month and a half after the very last episode of The Aquanauts aired. (And it wasn’t even being called The Aquanauts at that point; a few months before being canceled, the series was re-titled Malibu Run.)
So that explains the sudden appearance/disappearance of “Jefre” in the U.S. baby name data. What are your thoughts about this name? Do you like it, or do you prefer a more common spelling?
Here are hundreds of baby names that have a numerological value of “4.”
I’ve sub-categorized them by overall totals, because I think that some of the intermediate numbers could have special significance to people as well.
Within each group, I’ve listed up to ten of the most popular “4” names per gender (according to the current U.S. rankings).
Beneath all the names are some ways you could interpret the numerological value of “4,” including descriptions from two different numerological systems.
4 via 13
The following baby names add up to 13, which reduces to four (1+3=4).
“13” girl names: Cai, Eh, Ece, Gea
“13” boy names: Cade, Cai, Al, Eh, Cj, Jc, Dace, La
4 via 22
The following baby names add up to 22, which reduces to four (2+2=4).
The boy name Marquavious adds up to 157, which reduces to four (1+5+7=13; 1+3=4).
4 via 166
The boy name Muhammadyusuf adds up to 166, which reduces to four (1+6+6=13; 1+3=4).
4 via 175
The unisex names Kosisochukwu adds up to 175, which reduces to four (1+7+5=13; 1+3=4).
What Does “4” Mean?
First, we’ll look at the significance assigned to “4” by two different numerological sources. Second, and more importantly, ask yourself if “4” or any of the intermediate numbers above have any special significance to you.
Numerological Attributes
“4” (the tetrad) according to the Pythagoreans:
“Anatolius reports that it is called ‘justice,’ since the square (i.e., the area) […] is equal to the perimeter”
“It is the prerequisite of the general orderliness of the universe, so they everywhere called it a ‘custodian of Nature.'”
“Everything in the universe turns out to be completed in the natural progression up to the tetrad”
“The tetrad is the first to display the nature of solidity: the sequence is point, line, plane, solid (i.e. body).”
Examples of things that are divided into four parts:
“four traditional seasons of the year — spring, summer, autumn and winter.”
“four elements (fire, air, water and earth)”
“four cardinal points”
“four distinguishing points – ascendant, descendant, mid-heaven and nadir”
“Some say that all things are organized by four aspects – substance, shape, form and principle.”
“4” according to Edgar Cayce:
“In four, it makes for the greater weaknesses in the divisions…four being more of a division and weakness” (reading 261-15).
“In four, we find that of a division – and while a beauty in strength, in the divisions also makes for the greater weakness” (reading 5751-1).
Personal/Cultural Significance
Does “4” — or do any of the other numbers above (e.g., 22, 49, 76, 103) — have any special significance to you?
Think about your own preferences and personal experiences: lucky numbers, birth dates, music, sports, and so on. Maybe your favorite football team is the San Francisco 49ers, for example.
Also think about associations you may have picked up from your culture, your religion, or society in general.
If you have any interesting insights about the number 4, or any of the other numbers above, please leave a comment!
Source: Theologumena Arithmeticae, attributed to Iamblichus (c.250-c.330).
Just remember that the SSA data doesn’t become very accurate until the mid-to-late 20th century, so many of the numbers below don’t reflect reality all that well.
Same format as usual: Girl names on the left, boy names on the right. Numbers represent single-year decreases in usage. From 1880 to 1881, for instance, usage of the girl name Mary dropped by 146 babies and usage of the boy name William dropped by 1,008 babies.
I’ve already written about some of the names above (click the links to see the posts) and will write about others in the future. In the meanwhile, feel free to beat me to it! Comment below with the backstory on the fall of Shirley in the late ’30s, Linda in the early ’50s, etc.
A couple of months ago, we looked at a long, year-by-year list of the top baby name rises. A month after that, we saw the corresponding list of top drops.
On that second post, Frank B. left a comment in which he asked about absolute rises and drops — because the lists only covered relative movement within the data. So I thought two more posts were in order: top raw-number rises, and top raw-number drops.
We’ll start with the rises again. Just keep in mind that the SSA numbers don’t become very accurate until the mid-to-late 20th century, so many of the numbers below don’t quite reflect reality.
Here’s the format: Girl names are on the left, boy names are on the right, and the numbers represent single-year rises in usage. From 1880 to 1881, for instance, the usage of the girl name Ethel increased by 155 babies and the usage of the boy name Chester increased by 106 babies.
Some of these names I’ve written about already, and others I plan to write about in the future. If you can give explanations for any of those others right now, though, feel free! Just leave a comment…
“I’m Larry, this is my brother Darryl, and this is my other brother Darryl.”
From a 1936 newspaper article about movie actress Veda Ann Borg:
Miss Borg was given a new tag almost the minute she stepped into the studio. It was “Ann Noble.” […] Miss Borg contended that her own name is more descriptive of her personality than Ann Noble. The former model’s argument was convincing. She will be billed as Veda Ann Borg.
(Keavy, Hubbard. “Screen Life In Hollywood.” Wilkes-Barre Record 23 Apr. 1936: 19.)
How in the world did we get from “Jeremy” to “Jezza”?
There is a rule for how this works. Names which have the letter R in them–Jeremy, Catherine, Sharon, Barry, Murray–are trouble for speakers of non-rhotic variations of English to abbreviate. Rhoticity is a linguistic term for describing when the letter is pronounced; in non-rhotic dialects of English, the sound will be discarded unless followed immediately by a vowel. The dialects of England, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and, well, New England are all non-rhotic, which is why the word “car” sounds like “cah.”
This isn’t a problem in any of those names if they’re pronounced fully; there’s always a vowel after the R. But to truncate them would be difficult. Typically hypocoristic nicknames are formed by cutting everything but the first syllable and then either leaving that as-is or adding a vowel. That’s how “Daniel” becomes “Danno”: clip to the first syllable (“Dan”) and add a vowel. (The -o ending is most common for male names; -ie is more common for female names.)
The team, led by North Carolina State University’s Terry Gates, named the shark Galagadon nordquistae, a nod to its teeth, which have a stepped triangle shape like the spaceships in the 1980s video game Galaga, and to Karen Nordquist, the Field Museum volunteer who discovered the fossils.
Lorin now often finds himself babysitting while Cali campaigns against atomic power. Symbolically, not long ago she shed the name she’d “hated for 30 years” for one that sounded right. Margo became Cali. “I look at myself differently now,” she says firmly, “except people all across the country think Lorin has remarried.”
From a WPMU DEV blog post about the Wayback Machine digital archive:
The Wayback Machine was named to reference Mr. Peabody’s WABAC machine from the popular cartoon Rocky and Bullwinkle. In the show, the machine was pronounced as “way back,” which is where the index got its name.
However, Howard did go out of his way to confirm one long-held belief about Willow: that two of the villains were named after famous film critics. The evil General Kael was named after the notoriously ruthless Pauline Kael and the two-headed monster Eborsisk was named after the iconic At the Movies duo of Gene Siskel and Roger Ebert.
And, finally, a pair of snippets from a Colorado Public Radio article about Denver street names. First:
William McGaa [one of Denver’s founding officials] had a debaucherous reputation of his own, drinking and adulterating his way out of favor with the city’s elite. McGaa even named Wazee and Wewatta streets after two of his many wives, both Native American woman from local tribes.
(The settlement of Denver was named in late 1858. McGaa’s son, William Denver McGaa, was born in the settlement in March of 1859 and named after it. His mother was neither Wazee nor Wewatta, but a half-Native American woman named Jennie.)
Second, regarding Denver’s “double alphabetical” streets, which were renamed in 1904:
The pattern is a proper noun name, ideally British, followed by the name of a tree or plant. Albion and Ash, Bellaire and Birch, Clermont and Cherry.
The switch wasn’t without resistance from those wealthy neighborhoods. When Eudora Avenue became Fir Street, residents decried the name as “too plebeian.”
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