How popular is the baby name Mae 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 Mae.

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Popularity of the baby name Mae


Posts that mention the name Mae

New York family with 24 children

kinderfest

In 1946, the National Father’s Day Committee declared 63-year-old New Yorker George N. Davis the father with the largest family in the United States.

Whether or not his family really was “the largest family in the United States” at that time I don’t know, but I can tell you that he had a total of 24 children (though only 20 were still living in 1946). He had seven with his first wife, Lillian, and the rest with his second wife, Anna.

largest family 1940s
The Davis family of New York, 1946

Here are the names of all 24, in alphabetical order:

  1. Alice
  2. Anna
  3. Arthur
  4. Beulah
  5. Blanche
  6. Brayton
  7. Clark
  8. Charles (died in infancy)
  9. Derwood
  10. Emma Jean
  11. Geneva
  12. George
  13. Irving
  14. Isaac (died in infancy)
  15. Isaac
  16. Joyce Mae (died in infancy)
  17. Laura (died as an adult)
  18. Lena
  19. Lovisa
  20. Raymond
  21. Rupert
  22. Viva
  23. Wallace
  24. Winrick

According to the 1920 Census, he also had a stepdaughter named Ella.

Out of the 24 names on the list, which girl and boy names do you like best?

P.S. Here’s a short newsreel movie [vid] about the family.

Source: George N. Davis, Father of the Year

Top image: Ein Kinderfest (1868) by Ludwig Knaus

Name this couple’s daughter: Amelia? Cthulhu?

Canadian software developer Stephen McLaughlin and his wife Alysha have put up a website, NameMyDaughter.com, where you can suggest and/or vote for a name for their unborn baby girl, due on April 2.

Here’s what Stephen said about the decision to create the site:

I came home one day and was talking to my wife about naming our daughter and said, “You know, I should ask the Internet because that’s what I do for a living.”

The caveat, of course, is that the couple “will ultimately be making the final decision” regarding their daughter’s name. Meaning that the site is really no more than a great big suggestion engine that happens to be getting a lot of traffic right now, thanks to Reddit and some press coverage.

Well played, McLaughlin family. Well played.

But it’s an entertaining site nonetheless.

As you’d expect, the internet-suggested names are a mix of serious and silly. The day I created the this post, Amelia was the first name with the most votes. Now that I’m writing it up, the top choice is Cthulhu. Other first names with a lot of votes include Charlotte, Olivia, Camille, Sage, Megatron, Pond, Streetlamp and Stormageddon. Also, both Zelda and Not Zelda.

For middles I see Mae, Rose, Grace, Renee, All-Spark, Le-dash-a, Salad, and Of-the-sea. (Of-the-sea is actually kinda awesome. I’ve voted for that one a few times.)

What first-middle pairing do you think the McLaughlins will end up choosing?

What would you choose if you could name this baby?

Update: And the name is…not Cthulhu. Amelia Savannah Joy McLaughlin was born April 7.

P.S. The McLaughlins live in the British Columbia city Kelowna, which is not just a place, but also a baby name.

Sources:

Image: Screenshot of NameMyDaughter.com

Mamie Eisenhower was named after a song

Sheet music for "Lovely Lake Geneva" (1885)
“Lovely Lake Geneva”

Mamie Eisenhower, wife of Dwight D. Eisenhower, was born Mamie Geneva Doud in 1896 to John and Elivera Doud of Iowa. She was the second of four daughters.

Where did her middle name come from? Her mother was a fan of the popular song “Lovely Lake Geneva,” written by Charles B. Holmes and published in 1885.

Mamie’s older sister was named Eleanor. Her younger sisters were Eda Mae and Mabel Frances, but her father was “so disappointed that he had not yet had a son that he nicknamed his two younger daughters “Buster” and “Mike,” respectively.” They were known as Buster and Mike their entire lives.

Source: Eisenhower, Susan. Mrs. Ike: Portrait of a Marriage. Sterling, Virginia: Capital Books, 2002.

How did WWI affect the baby name Liberty?

"Ring it Again" poster for Second Liberty Loan of 1917

During World War I, the United States raised money for the war effort by selling Liberty Bonds to citizens.

The government offered a series of four Liberty Loans — two in 1917, two more in 1918.

“For Americans who were not inclined or able to enter into military service, fundraising offered an alternative demonstration of patriotism.”

A handful of parents took this patriotism even further by naming their babies Liberty.

How did this affect the overall popularity of the baby name Liberty?

  • 1919: 25 baby girls named Liberty
  • 1918: 150 baby girls, 14 baby boys named Liberty
  • 1917: 43 baby girls, 8 baby boys named Liberty
  • 1916: 6 baby girls, 7 baby boys named Liberty
  • 1915: (unlisted)
  • 1914: 7 baby girls named Liberty

Liberty became the 585th most popular baby girl name in 1918.

Graph of the usage of the baby name Liberty in the U.S. since 1880
Usage of the baby name Liberty

(It didn’t enter the top 1,000 again until 1976, the year of the U.S. Bicentennial. It entered a third time in 2001, the year of the 9/11 attacks, and has been a fixture in the top 1,000 ever since.)

Families with the surname Bond must have been especially tempted to name their babies Liberty in 1917 and 1918.

I’ve found records for several babies named Liberty Bond, such as Liberty Lois Bond (b. 1917, California) and Liberty C. Bond (b. 1918, Michigan).

A baby girl who ended up with the name Liberty was born to Wallace and Jenny Bond of Oklahoma in 1917:

Named “Flossie Mae” at birth, her name was changed to “Liberty” when a relative told her father that she would buy Liberty Bonds in her name if he would make the switch. (She resented the name until she got a copy of her birth certificate decades later and learned that she otherwise would have gone through life as Flossie Mae.)

In the early 1950s, Ed Sullivan wrote that actor Ridge Bond had a cousin, born during the first World War, named Liberty Bond. “She married Frank Bell, and her name became Liberty Bell.”

Liberty Bond was also used more than once as a first-middle combination.

For instance, a baby named Liberty Bond Bailey, born in New York in 1918, made national headlines:

News comes from Ithaca, N.Y., that a real, live “Liberty Bond,” weighing nine pounds, arrived in that city on the morning of April 6, simultaneously with the opening of the loan drive and the anniversary of our entrance into the great war. It wasn’t of the accustomed variety, however, but a lusty, named “Liberty Bond” Bailey by his patriotic parents, Mr. and Mrs. Howard C. Bailey of 614 Utica Street. The boy’s parents were so elated by the triple significance of the day that they named the new arrival in honor of the great bond drive.

According to his wife, his name was the doctor’s idea:

“The doctor mentioned it to his mother about the bonds and as he handed (the baby) over, he said, ‘Here’s your liberty bond’,” Garetta Bailey said. “So, she named him Liberty Bond.”

And I’ve found another Liberty Bond Bailey, believe it or not, born almost exactly a year earlier in Oklahoma.

A 1918 newspaper reported that a baby boy born to Mr. and Mrs. Alex Sleime of West Virginia was named Liberty Bond.

Records suggest that around 8 other babies were also named “Liberty Bond,” including Liberty Bond Todd (b. 1917, Texas) and Liberty Bond Jones (b. 1918, North Carolina).

P.S. Another first-middle combination I spotted a handful of times was “Liberty Loan.” One example: Liberty Loan Hickman, born in Texas in 1917.

Sources:

Image: “Ring it again” poster for Second Liberty Loan of 1917 (public domain)