How popular is the baby name Lynn 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 Lynn.
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The country of the Netherlands, located in Northwestern Europe, is bordered by both Belgium and Germany.
Last year, from January to November, the Netherlands welcomed more than 168,000 babies — over 82,000 girls and over 86,000 boys.
What were the most popular names among these babies? Emma and Noah.
Here are the Netherlands’ top 50 girl names and top 50 boy names of 2022:
Girl Names
Emma, 677 baby girls
Julia, 655
Mila, 624
Sophie, 620
Olivia, 591
Yara, 559
Saar, 532 – short form of Sarah
Nora, 524
Tess, 509
Noor, 501
Milou, 489
Sara, 486
Liv, 482
Zoë, 473
Evi, 466
Anna, 455
Luna, 451
Lotte, 423 (tie)
Nina, 423 (tie)
Eva, 405
Emily, 389
Lauren, 386
Maeve, 384
Lina, 383
Elin, 379
Maud, 368
Sarah, 350
Nova, 345
Loïs, 340 (tie)
Sofia, 340 (tie)
Mia, 339
Sofie, 332
Lieke, 330
Fleur, 328
Isa, 325
Fien, 324 – short form of Josefien
Lynn, 319
Hailey, 312
Roos, 297
Julie, 290
Livia, 288
Fenna, 284 – feminine form of Fen (a Frisian short form of Ferdinand)
Ella, 279
Sophia, 275
Bo, 274
Lily, 252
Ivy, 248
Romée, 246
Lena, 244
Noé, 241
Boy Names
Noah, 871 baby boys
Liam, 666
Luca, 664
Lucas, 652
Mees, 621 – short form of Bartholomeus
Finn, 596
James, 594
Milan, 591
Levi, 585
Sem, 582
Daan, 538
Noud, 533 – short form of Arnoud (the Dutch form of Arnold)
Luuk, 518
Adam, 508
Sam, 495
Bram, 470
Zayn, 447
Mason, 440
Benjamin, 409
Boaz, 369
Siem, 360 – short form of Simon
Guus, 356
Morris, 353
Olivier, 349 (tie)
Thomas, 349 (tie)
Teun, 346 – short form of Antonius
Gijs, 335 (tie) – short form of Gijsbert
Mats, 335 (tie)
Max, 326
Jesse, 317
Julian, 315
Otis, 314
Floris, 312
Lars, 307
David, 304 (tie)
Jake, 304 (tie)
Moos, 303 – short form of Mozes
Rayan, 300
Jens, 291
Joep, 289
Owen, 286
Thijs, 273
Jan, 270 (3-way tie)
Oliver, 270 (3-way tie)
Willem, 270 (3-way tie)
Mick, 269
Jack, 262
Jurre, 259 – short form of Jurryt (the Frisian form of Gerard)
Abel, 254
Kai, 253
Dutch onomastician Gerrit Bloothooft noted that, if similar names had been counted together, the name-groups Saar/Sara/Sarah and Luca/Lucas/Luuk would have topped the girls’ list and the boys’ list, respectively.
The girls’ top 100 included Cato (55th), Veerle (60th), Puck (75th), and Merel (83rd).
The boys’ top 100 included Jaxx (56th), Sven (64th), Hidde (72nd), and Jip (78th).
Looking for baby names that feature the letter-pair OO?
I’ve collected oodles of OO names for you in this post!
Before we get to the names, though, let’s get one big question out of the way…
What sound does OO make?
In today’s English, OO commonly makes the sound you hear in the words boot, food, and moon. But it can also make other sounds, such as the ones you hear in the words blood, or door, or good.
Why all this diversity?
A lot of it has to do with the Great Vowel Shift, which lasted from the late 14th century until about 1700. The GVS was a major factor in the transition from Middle English to Modern English.
In Middle English, OO tended to make a “long o” sound. (As one of my sources explained, “scribes often indicated a long vowel sound by doubling the vowel letter.”) So, in Middle English, the words boot, food, and moon sounded more like “boat,” “foad,” and “moan.”
During the Great Vowel Shift, the pronunciation of most long vowel sounds inexplicably shifted “upward” in the mouth, and the words boot, food, and moon acquired their present-day pronunciations.
But it’s not quite as simple as that. Because some words underwent multiple pronunciation changes during the GVS, while others didn’t undergo any change at all.
And this resulted in OO having a variety of pronunciations in Modern English.
Now, back to the names!
Top baby names with OO
Let’s begin with the most popular names with OO:
Top girl names with OO
Top boy names with OO
Brooklyn Brooke Brooklynn Noor Cooper Oona Rooney Brooks Hoorain Moon
Cooper Brooks Boone Kooper Booker Woodrow Haroon Woods Brooklyn Elwood
Now here are the same names again, but this time around I’ve added some details (including definitions, rankings, and popularity graphs).
Booker
The English surname Booker, which is derived from the Middle English word bokere, originally referred to someone who worked with books (such as a scribe, or a book binder).
Usage of the baby name Booker
Booker is currently the 1,204th most popular boy name in the nation.
Boone
The Anglo-Norman surname Boone has several potential origins, one of which is the Old French word bon, meaning “good.”
Usage of the baby name Boone
Boone is currently the 573rd most popular boy name in the U.S.
Brooke + Brooks
The English surname Brooke is a variant of the surname Brook, which originally referred to someone who lived either near a brook or a stream, or in one of the various English villages called Brook/Brooke.
Brooks is currently the 77th most popular boy name in the nation, whereas Brooke ranks 259th for girls.
The name Brooks is also sometimes spelled Brookes or Broox.
Brooklyn + Brooklynn
The name Brooklyn comes from the name of the New York City borough, which was founded by Dutch settlers in the 17th century and named after the Dutch town of Breukelen. The town name (originally “Broecklede”) can be traced back to the Middle Dutch words broec, meaning “marshland,” and lede, which referred to a dug watercourse (as opposed to a natural one).
Usage of the baby name Brooklyn
Brooklynn is a variant of Brooklyn (likely influenced by the name Lynn).
Usage of the baby name Brooklynn
Brooklyn is currently the 63rd most popular girl name in the U.S., and Brooklynn ranks 314th. Brooklyn is also the 2,515th most popular name for boys.
Other spellings of the name include Brooklynne, Brookelyn/Brookelynn/Brookelynne, Brooklin/Brooklinn, and Brooklen/Brooklenn.
Cooper + Kooper
The English surname Cooper, which is derived from the Middle English word couper, originally referred to someone who made or repaired wooden vessels (such as casks, tubs, and buckets).
Cooper is currently the 68th most popular boy name in the nation, and Kooper ranks 1,090th. Cooper is also the 1,597th most popular name for girls.
Elwood
The English surname Elwood is ultimately derived from the Anglo-Saxon personal name Ælfweald, which was comprised of the Old English words ælf, meaning “elf,” and weald, meaning “rule.”
Usage of the baby name Elwood
Elwood is currently the 2,582nd most popular boy name in the U.S.
The name is also sometimes spelled Ellwood.
Haroon
The name Haroon is the Urdu form of the Arabic name Harun, which is derived from the Biblical name Aaron (of unknown origin).
Usage of the baby name Haroon
Haroon is currently the 2,033rd most popular boy name in the nation.
Hoorain
The name Hoorain seems to be an Urdu name based on the Quranic phrase hoorun’een, which refers to maidens with beautiful eyes.
Usage of the baby name Hoorain
Hoorain is currently the 3,396th most popular girl name in the U.S.
Moon
The name Moon refers, of course, to the moon — the round object that circles the Earth once a month and shines at night (because it reflects light from the sun). The English word moon can be traced back to the Old English word mona.
Usage of the baby name Moon
Moon is currently the 3,455th most popular girl name in the nation.
Noor
The name Noor is a transcription of the Arabic word meaning “light.”
Usage of the baby name Noor
Noor is currently the 857th most popular girl name in the U.S.
Oona
The name Oona is an Anglicized form of the Irish name Úna, which may be derived from the Old Irish word úan, meaning “lamb.”
Usage of the baby name Oona
Oona is currently the 2,288th most popular girl name nation.
The name is also sometimes spelled Oonagh.
Rooney
The Irish surname Rooney is ultimately derived from the Irish word ruanaidh, meaning “champion, hero.”
Usage of the baby name Rooney
Rooney is currently the 2,552nd most popular girl name in the U.S.
Woodrow
The English surname Woodrow originally referred to someone who lived either by a row of trees, by a row of houses in a wood, or in one of the various English villages called Woodrow/Wood Row.
Usage of the baby name Woodrow
Woodrow is currently the 1,752nd most popular boy name in the nation.
Woods
The English surname Woods, a variant of Wood, originally referred to someone who lived in or near a wood. It’s ultimately based on the Middle English word wode, meaning “wood.”
Usage of the baby name Woods
Woods is currently the 2,205th most popular boy name in the U.S.
More names with OO
So, what other names have OO in them?
Here are some less-common choices (that are still seeing usage in the U.S. these days):
Ajooni
Alanood
Anoop
Aroosh
Avnoor
Aynoor
Batool
Bloom
Boomer
Booth
Brooker
Brooklee, Brookley, Brookleigh
Brookson
Brookston
Cooke
Dawood
Eastwood
Eknoor
Farooq
Goodness
Gurnoor
Ha-Joon
Harnoor
Haywood
Hooper
Hoor
Hooria, Hooriya
Htoo
Japnoor
Jasnoor
Ji-Hoo
Ji-Soo
Jood
Joon
Joory
Kohinoor
Kulsoom
Leeloo
Linwood
Lynwood
Mahmood
Mahnoor
Manroop
Mansoor
Masooma
Maysoon
Moo
Moosa
Nooh
Noomi
Noora, Noorah
Nooreh
Noori
Nooria, Nooriyah
Noorseen
Noorulain
Prabhnoor
Poorna
Roo
Roohi
Rook
Roop
Roosevelt
Rooster
Sherwood
Shooter
Sookie
Sun-Woo
Taimoor
Tooba
Trooper
Wood
Woodensley
Woodland
Woodley
Woodlyn
Woodson
Woody, Woodie
Woo-Jin
Yaqoob
Yaqoot
Yoona
Zaroon
Zooey
So far we’ve seen two presidential names: Woodrow and Roosevelt. Did you know that a total of five U.S. presidents had OO names, and that all five served during the first half of the 20th century?
(The surnames Coolidge and Hoover have been used as first names as well — just not recently.)
We’ve also seen a number of names that include the English words “wood,” “good,” and “brook.” So I combed through the earlier SSA data to find more names with these words:
Finally, if you’d like something even more uncommon (in the U.S.) than the names above, you can look to any of the various languages around the world known to feature the letter-pair OO in personal names. Examples include:
Dutch (e.g., Noortje, Joost)
Finnish (e.g., Auroora, Roope)
Estonian (e.g., Loore, Toomas)
Arabic (e.g., Hooda, Maqsood)
Persian (e.g., Afsoon, Behrooz)
Hindi (e.g., Poornima, Saroo)
Korean (e.g., Kyung-Sook, Sung-Hoon)
(The Middle Eastern and Asian names — because they’re being transcribed from non-Latin scripts — can also be spelled other ways, such as “Behrouz” and “Purnima.”)
Which of the OO names above to do you like most? (Can you think of any that I missed?) Let me know in the comments!
P.S. If you’d like to see popularity graphs for any of the more common names in this post, just check below for the long list of tags. Each tag is a name, so find the name you’re interested in and click through. The graph will take a moment to load — it’s grabbing a lot of data — but it will allow you to see at a glance the name’s current and historical U.S. usage.
It’s now more than a decade since Congolese job hopeful Guy Goma found himself offering his not-so-expert analysis of a legal dispute between Apple Computer (now Apple Inc.) and Apple Corp, The Beatles’ record label, over trademark rights.
Goma, after arriving at the BBC’s West London headquarters for an interview for a job in the IT department on May 8, 2006, was mistaken for a studio guest, British technology journalist Guy Kewney, and ushered all the way into a live BBC News 24 studio.
This was Guy Goma’s unplanned TV appearance:
[The mix-up happened just a couple of months after I started this name blog, incidentally.]
From a 1979 People article about the “eerie similarities” between two Ohio men who discovered, at age 39, that they were twins separated at birth:
Curiously, both had been christened James by their adoptive parents [who lived 40 miles apart]. As schoolboys, both enjoyed math and carpentry — but hated spelling. Both pursued similar adult occupations: Lewis is a security guard at a steel mill, and Springer was a deputy sheriff (though he is now a clerk for a power company). Both married women named Linda, only to divorce and remarry — each a woman named Betty. Both have sons: James Alan Lewis and James Allan Springer.
Penn Jillette, speaking to contestant Paul Gertner during a mid-2020 episode of Penn & Teller: Fool Us:
You gave me this pen. And you gave me the pen with a joke — a joke about my name. You said, “Here’s a pen, Penn.”
When I was in grade school, it would be, “Hey Penn, got a pencil?” “Hey Penn, how’s pencil?” I should have an index of all those pen jokes that were told to me. I’d have over fifty, maybe more than that. It was amazing.
On the name of activist/environmentalist MaVynee Betsch (1935-2005):
Even her name, pronounced “Ma-veen,” requires a politically charged translation. Christened Marvyne, Betsch added an extra e for the environment, and dropped the r in the 1980s to protest the environmental policies of the Reagan administration.
My family had chosen “Linda” in part because it sounded incontrovertibly American to their Soviet ears, practically an idiom of assimilation unto itself. According to a 2018 study, it is the “trendiest” name in U.S. history, having experienced a sharp rise and precipitous fall in popularity amid the postwar baby boom. By naming me Linda, my parents hoped they were conferring an easy American life upon me, a life free of mispronunciations and mistakes. For them, such a life would be forever out of reach.
[…]
Most of the Lindas I have encountered in my age group are also millennial daughters of immigrants; our name is a reminder of our parents’ aspirations and of the immense promise with which our name is laden.
As a 61-year-old man, I have suffered all my life with the name Lynn. My mother simply named me after a little-known celebrity of the early 50s because she wanted a name that was not capable of being shortened. For a while I had people such as Welsh long jumper Lynn Davies to allay the perpetual claims that “it was a girl’s name”. But this led others to believe that it had to be of Welsh derivation. But there are no new male “Lynns” to correct either opinion. All this despite the fact that in the 1930s and 1940s, I believe that Lynn was more popular as a man’s name – especially in America. ~Lynn Jonathan Prescott, Birmingham
From the 2009 book Johnny Cash and the Paradox of American Identity by Leigh H. Edwards:
In [the autobiography] Cash, he explicitly addresses how he represents his identity differently in different contexts, noting how he uses different names for the different “Cashes” he played in different social settings, stating that he “operate[s] at various levels.” He stages a struggle between “Johnny Cash” the hell-rais[ing], hotel-trashing, pill-popping worldwide star and “John R. Cash,” a more subdued, adult persona.
The word Sway popped up for the first time in the U.S. baby name data in 2001:
2003: 14 baby girls and 5 baby boys named Sway
2002: 12 baby girls named Sway
2001: 8 baby girls named Sway [debut]
2000: unlisted
1999: unlisted
For a long time I assumed the main influence was MTV personality Sway Calloway. But, while I still think Sway had an influence on male usage, I’ve since discovered a much better explanation for the 2001 debut as a female name.
One of the main characters in the 2000 car heist film Gone in 60 Seconds was mechanic-slash-bartender Sara “Sway” Wayland (played by Angelina Jolie). She was the love interest of protagonist Randall “Memphis” Raines (played by Nicolas Cage), who was tasked with stealing 50 specific, expensive cars inside of 72 hours.
The film didn’t get great reviews, but I do remember appreciating the fact that each of the 50 cars was assigned a feminine code-name:
So, how do you feel about the name Sway? If you were having a baby girl, would you be more likely to name her something modern, like Sway, or something traditional, like Sara or Susan?
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