How popular is the baby name Lajos 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 Lajos.

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Popularity of the baby name Lajos


Posts that mention the name Lajos

What gave the baby name Cornel a boost in the mid-1940s?

Actor Cornel Wilde in the movie "A Song to Remember" (1945)
Cornel Wilde in “A Song to Remember“

According to the U.S. baby name data, the rare name Cornel more than sextupled in usage in 1946 (which was the first year of the post-war baby boom):

  • 1948: 47 baby boys named Cornel
  • 1947: 59 baby boys named Cornel [rank: 907th]
  • 1946: 38 baby boys named Cornel
  • 1945: 6 baby boys named Cornel
  • 1944: 5 baby boys named Cornel

This jump qualified Cornel as the year’s fastest-rising boy name, in terms of relative increase. One year later, the name reached peak usage.

What was drawing attention to the name Cornel in the mid-1940s?

Hungarian-American actor Cornel Wilde, who attained stardom with his portrayal of Polish composer Frédéric Chopin in the early 1945 film A Song to Remember. (The role earned Wilde his first and only Academy Award nomination.)

The “muscular and dashing” actor went on to star opposite Gene Tierney in the late 1945 melodrama Leave Her to Heaven, the second-highest-grossing film of the year. He also played the lead roles in the swashbucklers A Thousand and One Nights (1945) and The Bandit of Sherwood Forest (1946).

Wilde was born Kornél Lajos Weisz in the Kingdom of Hungary in 1912. After his family immigrated to the United States in 1920, his name was Anglicized to Cornelius Louis Wilde.

What are your thoughts on the name Cornel?

P.S. A Song to Remember was what inspired young pianist Wladziu Liberace to start putting a candelabrum atop his piano…

Sources:

Image: Screenshot of A Song to Remember

Where did the baby name Kennan come from in 1952?

American diplomat George F. Kennan (1904-2005)
George F. Kennan

The name Kennan popped up in the U.S. baby name data for the first time 1952:

  • 1954: 11 baby boys named Kennan
  • 1953: 6 baby boys named Kennan
  • 1952: 8 baby boys named Kennan [debut]
  • 1951: unlisted
  • 1950: unlisted

If there’s a reason — and typically there’s a reason — my guess is George F. Kennan, the Russian-speaking diplomat nominated by President Truman in February of 1952 to be the U.S. Ambassador to the USSR.

He started the job in May, but didn’t last long.

Why? Because, in mid-September, while addressing the press in Berlin, Kennan “compared life in the Moscow Embassy with his internment by the Nazis at Bad Nauheim.”

Stalin wasn’t pleased.

In early October, the USSR accused Kennan of making “slanderous attacks hostile to the Soviet Union in a rude violation of generally recognized norms of international law.” He was declared a persona non grata and refused re-admittance into the country.

George Kennan making headlines throughout the year — not to mention the similarity of his surname to the then-trendy baby names Kenneth and Kevin — is likely what influenced a handful of expectant parents to name their sons Kennan in 1952.

What are your thoughts on Kennan as a first name?

P.S. Keenan’s father had a cool name: Kossuth Kent Kennan. He was born in Milwaukee in 1851, the year Hungarian freedom fighter Lajos Kossuth visited the city during a tour of the United States. (Lajos is the Hungarian form of Louis.)

P.P.S. In March of 1967, George Kennan was asked “to go to Switzerland on a secret mission to establish the bona fides of a woman who had defected from the Soviet Union and claimed to be the daughter of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin.” The next month, news broke of Svetlana’s defection to the U.S.…

Sources:

Image: George F. Kennan (LOC)

Babies named for Giuseppe Garibaldi

Italian revolutionary Giuseppe Garibaldi (1807-1882)
Giuseppe Garibaldi

Italian general and patriot Giuseppe Garibaldi (1807-1882) was a freedom fighter on two continents.

In his homeland, he strove to liberate the Italian states from Austrian rule, and played a crucial role in the unification of Italy in the early 1860s.

And, while he was in exile in South America (1836-1848), he participated in the revolutionary struggles of both Brazil and Uruguay.

As you might imagine, thousands of babies born in Europe — and thousands more born in South America — have been named after Giuseppe Garibaldi. (We spotted a Uruguayan baby named Garibaldi just a few months ago!)

But what about the U.S.?

Turns out that Garibaldi was strongly admired in the U.S. as well, particularly around the time of the Civil War:

Garibaldi’s thrilling deeds — unfolding day-by-day through 1860 on the front page of almost every newspaper, alongside stories detailing America’s own dissolution — stood as both an inspiration and a rebuke.

Several hundred U.S baby boys — most born during the 1860s — have been named after Garibaldi. Some examples…

  • Garibaldi Stevens (b. 1860 in Utah)
  • John Garibaldi Sargent (b. 1860 in Vermont), who served as U.S. Attorney General under Calvin Coolidge.
  • Garibaldi Dunn (b. 1861 in Kentucky)
    • He had a brother, born in 1863, named Ellsworth.
  • Eldon Garibaldi Burdick (b. 1862 in Wisconsin)
    • Both his son and his grandson were also named “Eldon Garibaldi.”
  • John Garibaldi Weihe (b. 1862 in Ohio), who played Major League Baseball in the 1880s.
  • Garibaldi Krantz (b. 1862 in Pennsylvania)
  • Garibaldi Niles (b. 1866 in Illinois)
    • He had a brother, born in 1849, named Kossuth — likely for Lajos Kossuth, who ruled Hungary during the revolution of 1848-1849.
  • Antonio Giuseppe Garibaldi Pellegrini (b. 1867 in New York)
  • Joseph Garibaldi Potter (b. 1869 in Pennsylvania)
  • Joseph Garibaldi Lanfranconi (b. 1874 in Virginia)
  • Rudolph Garibaldi Neverman (b. 1875 in Wisconsin)

The Italian surname Garibaldi, which is based on the medieval personal name Garibaldo, ultimately comes from the ancient Germanic words ger, meaning “spear, lance,” and bald, meaning “bold, brave.”

Interestingly, Giuseppe Garibaldi named two of his sons after fellow Italian patriots. Menotti, born in Brazil in 1840, was named for Ciro Menotti, while Ricciotti, born in Uruguay in 1847, was named for Nicola Ricciotti.

P.S. Giuseppe is pronounced joo-ZEHP-peh.

Sources:

Image: Adapted from Garibaldi (1866)