How popular is the baby name Pat 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 Pat.

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Popularity of the baby name Pat


Posts that mention the name Pat

Three more baby names from dreams

twilight

So far we’ve talked about three baby names discovered through dreams: Easton, West, and Axl. Today we’ve got another three — two more from celebrities, one from a non-celeb.

Let’s start with the non-celeb: Selena Smith, career development coach at Spartanburg Community College in South Carolina. In an interview published about a month ago, she mentioned that the name of her 12-year-old son named Kyler “came to me in a dream while I was pregnant.”

Next we have actress/WWE wrestler Stacy Keibler, who said the name of her daughter Ava Grace (b. 2014) “came to me in a dream,” without elaborating. When asked about potential baby names a few weeks before the baby was born, Keibler said: “We just talked about one name and that was it–easy peasy. Everything with us has been easy and effortless, including the name.”

Finally there’s Pat Monahan, vocalist for the band Train. He said the name of his son Rock (b. 2012) came from a dream, but the person who had the dream wasn’t one of the parents:

“My sister-in-law was having these very intuitive, very intense dreams that [my unborn son] was visiting her and insisting that his name was Rock,” the singer, 43, tells PEOPLE.

After several episodes of baby boy revealing his name choice, Monahan admits they began to “take it real seriously” — especially when the expectant parents weren’t getting the message.

“She said that my son was coming to her and grabbing her face and saying, ‘Aunt Summer, my mom and dad won’t listen to me in their dreams. You need to tell them my name is Rock,'” he recalls.

“Then she had another one where he was wearing a [Colorado] Rockies uniform playing baseball. He was like, ‘Aunt Summer, look, my name’s on [my shirt].'”

Pat didn’t say how many name-related dreams Summer had in total.

Do you know of any other stories like these? Or, have you ever dreamed a baby name?

(Incidentally, a Kardashian baby born in late 2016 was named Dream, so “Dream” itself may see a boost in usage in 2016 or 2017.)

Update, Mar. 2024: Here’s one more dream-name story! It was posted to Toronto’s (now-defunct) website The Baby File in early 2011 by someone named Steven.

[I]n 2003 we did not know what sex our baby would be but since my side has only produced boys for the last 90 yrs, the odds we good it was going to be a boy. So when it came to names we had the most disagreements [with] boys names. Then the night before the birth my wife had a dream in which a room of white bearded elders had said that “her name will be Elowyn”. We had never heard that name before nor was there anything online about it in 2003. The next day we were surprised with birth of a … girl! So we went with the dream and “Elowyn” came into shine over our world.

Sources: 20 Questions: Stacy Keibler Fills Us In, Stacy Keibler Says Picking Daughter’s Name Was ‘Easy Peasy’, Pat Monahan: How We Chose Our Son’s Name

Image: Adapted from Twilight crescent Moon by ESO/G. Brammer under CC BY 4.0.

Cryptography names: Alice, Bob, Eve

protocol

Since the late 1970s, cryptographers have been using personal names (instead of labels like “person A” and “person B”) to describe various communications scenarios. Many of these scenarios involve two communicating parties named Alice and Bob and an eavesdropper named Eve.

Extra parties are assigned names alphabetically (e.g., Carol, Dave) unless they play a specific role within the scenario. For instance, a password cracker is named Craig, a malicious attacker is named Mallory, an intruder is named Trudy, and a whistle-blower is named Wendy.

In zero-knowledge protocols, the “prover” and “verifier” of a message are typically named Peggy and Victor…but Pat and Vanna (after Wheel of Fortune presenters Pat Sajak and Vanna White) are sometimes used instead.

Here’s more about Alice and Bob from American cryptographer Bruce Schneier:

And you’d see paper after paper, and [in] the opening few paragraphs, the authors would explain what they’re doing in terms of Alice and Bob. So Alice and Bob have a storied history. They send each other secrets, they get locked in jail, they get married, they get divorced, they’re trying to date each other. Anything two people might want to do securely, Alice and Bob have done it somewhere in the cryptographic literature.

Question of the day: If you were tasked with updating the names of “person A” (female) and “person B” (male), what new names would you choose?

Sources:

Image: Protocol by Randall Munroe under CC BY-NC 2.5.

Roald Dahl named his baby after $20

twenty dollar bill

Children’s author Roald Dahl — famous for books such as Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, James and the Giant Peach, and Matilda — was born to Norwegian immigrant parents in Wales in 1916. He was named after Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen.

After serving as a fighter pilot during WWII (and creating the fifinella gremlin), Dahl married American actress Patricia Neal in 1953. They had a total of five children together.

Their first baby was named Olivia Twenty. Why a number as a middle name?

Olivia Twenty was born in New York on April 20, 1955, and named after her mother’s favorite Shakespearean heroine, the date of her birth, and the fact that Roald had $20 in his pocket when he came to visit Pat in the hospital.

(Sadly, Olivia Twenty died of the measles in late 1962, at the age of seven, before a reliable measles vaccine had been developed.)

Their second child, born in 1957, was named Chantal Sophia. Soon after she was born and christened, the Dahls realized that “Chantal” rhymed with “Dahl,” so they began calling her by the nickname Tessa.

The last three Dahl children were named Theo Matthew (b. 1960), Ophelia Magdalena (b. 1964), and Lucy Neal (b. 1965). The name Ophelia could be another Shakespearean reference, while the middle names Sophia and Magdalena likely come from Dahl’s mother, Sofie Magdalene.

P.S. In April of 1964, Patricia Neal won the Oscar for Best Actress for her work in the 1963 movie Hud.

Sources:

  • Sturrock, Donald. Storyteller: The Authorized Biography of Roald Dahl. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2010.
  • Roald Dahl – Wikipedia

Image: Adapted from $20 Federal Reserve Bank Note (1929) (public domain)

[Latest update: June 2023]

Babies named for Pat Tillman

Football player and soldier Pat Tillman (1976-2004)
Pat Tillman

Patrick Daniel “Pat” Tillman — who’d played collegiate football at Arizona State University and professional football with the Arizona Cardinals — gave up his NFL career to enlist in the U.S. Army following the September 11 attacks.

After Tillman was killed in Afghanistan in April of 2004, several babies were named in his honor, including these three from Arizona specifically:

  • Tillman Jackson Cummings, born in July of 2004.
  • Tillman James Cunningham, born in October of 2006.
  • Tillman Bruce Okrepkie, born in November of 2015.

Source: Marshall, John. “Across Arizona, Parents Name Children After Pat Tillman.” ABC News 29 Apr. 2016.

Image: Clipping from the cover of the New York Daily News (24 Apr. 2004)