How popular is the baby name Proclamation 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 Proclamation.

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Popularity of the baby name Proclamation


Posts that mention the name Proclamation

Babies named for Sterling Price

American soldier Sterling Price (1809-1867)
Sterling Price

Sterling Price was an officer in the Confederate Army during the American Civil War.

He was born into a family of slave-owning planters in Virginia, and moved (with his family) to Missouri as a young man. He entered politics in the 1830s, fought in the Mexican-American War in the 1940s, and served a four-year term as governor of Missouri in the mid-1850s.

During the Civil War, he was initially the commander of the Missouri State Guard. He joined the Confederates as a Major-General in early 1862.

In terms of namesakes, I found a smattering born in the 1850s, and hundreds more born during the first half of the 1860s.

Here are some of the Missouri boys who were named after their state’s governor:

And here are more than a dozen of the boys (also mostly from Missouri) who were named in honor of Price during the Civil War era:

So…how could a baby be named “Robert Lee Sterling Price Stephenson” after a pair of famous Civil War generals if he was born more than two years before the conflict started?

He wasn’t named right away — like many of the children born during that time period.

In fact, Sterling Price Robbins — the namesake just below Stephenson on the list — was born in late 1860, but not baptized until mid-1862. And his name proved to be controversial among locals in St. Louis:

In June 1862, [Rev. Samuel McPheeters] baptized a baby with the name the parents selected — Sterling Price Robbins, in honor of the Confederate leader at Wilson’s Creek. After some church members complained, federal officials banished McPheeters.

Similarly, Ohio baby girl Emancipation Proclamation Coggeshall wasn’t named until she was 2 years old.

Sources:

Image: Sterling Price

Babies named for Horatio Alger

American author Horatio Alger (1832-1899)
Horatio Alger

During the last three decades of the 19th century, American author Horatio Alger (1832-1899) wrote dozens of young adult novels. All of them were about boys who overcame poverty — through honesty, hard work, “cheerful perseverance,” and a bit of luck — to attain wealth and respectability.

Alger’s most successful rags-to-riches tale was Ragged Dick (1868), about a quick-witted bootblack named Dick (who began to go by “Richard” after his position in society had improved).

His subsequent novels featured similar plots and protagonists. They had titles like Mark, the Match Boy (1869); Ben, The Luggage Boy (1870); and Dan, the Newsboy (1893). These stories “influenced several generations of young readers, future achievers, and memoir-writers, from Andrew Carnegie to Malcolm X.”

No doubt many baby boys in the U.S. were named after Alger’s various main characters, but I’ve also found a handful named after Alger himself. Some examples…

Several others were born conspicuously early:

The first one — just seven years younger than Alger, and born in the same town — must have been named in honor the author’s father, Unitarian minister Horatio Alger, Sr.

The next three may not have been named until they were several years old (à la Emancipation Proclamation). Or perhaps they were named as babies, but their parents were inspired by Alger’s earlier work. His poem “Gone to the War” appeared on the front page of a Minnesota newspaper in 1861, for instance, and his short story “Edward’s Temptation” ran in its entirety on the front page of an Ohio paper in 1864.

Interestingly, Charles Alger Hiss, whose father was “a great admirer of Horatio Alger,” was, in turn, the father of Alger Hiss — the U.S. State Department official accused of being a Soviet spy in the late 1940s. The Hiss case helped advance the careers of noted anti-communists Richard Nixon and Joseph McCarthy.

Sources:

Image: Horatio Alger Jr.

Unusual political names in Connecticut

Political map of the USA, 1956

James A. Bill (1817-1900) of Lyme, Connecticut, served in the Connecticut state senate in 1852 and 1853 and in the Connecticut House of Representatives in 1849 and 1867. He also happened to be a rare pro-slavery Northerner in the years before and during the Civil War. This fact is reflected in the names of the last three children:

  1. Elizabeth
  2. Phoebe
  3. Mary
  4. Rebecca
  5. Lodowick
  6. James
  7. Kansas Nebraska (born in July, 1855)
  8. Lecompton Constitution (b. October, 1857)
  9. Jefferson Davis (b. February, 1862)

Kansas Nebraska Bill was named after the Kansas-Nebraska Act (1854), which created the territories of Kansas and Nebraska, but also allowed the territories to decide for themselves whether or not they would permit slavery (the “popular sovereignty” principle).

Lecompton Constitution Bill was named after the Lecompton Constitution (1857), a proposed pro-slavery constitution for the state of Kansas that was defeated early the next year.

And Jefferson Davis Bill was, of course, named after Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederacy throughout the Civil War.

Their older brother, Lodowick, inherited his interesting first name from James’s father. The name Lodowick — like Louis, Ludwig, and Luigi — can be traced back to the Germanic name Chlodovech, which consists of the elements hlud, meaning “famous, loud” and wig, meaning “war, battle.”

P.S. Other notable Civil War-era baby names include Emancipation Proclamation (“Prockie”), Gettysburg (“Gettie”), Kenesaw Mountain, and Elmer Ellsworth.

Sources:

Image: Adapted from Reynolds’s Political Map of the United States 1856

Baby name story: Laxative Bromo Quinine

E. W. Grove Laxative Bromo Quinine
Laxative Bromo Quinine

A baby named Laxative? Could it be legit?

Yes, amazingly.

What’s the story?

On October 3, 1903, a baby boy was born to Taylor and Lizzie Crim of Lubbock, Texas.

When the baby was a couple of years old, he became seriously ill. His parents tried all the remedies they knew of. Nothing worked.

In an effort to save his son’s life, Taylor Crim trekked from his farm in the countryside to the nearest general store.

After Taylor explained his plight to the storekeeper, a traveling salesman who’d overheard the conversation mentioned that he sold a line of drugs that might help.

So Taylor Crim brought the salesman back to his farm. The salesman stayed the night, periodically giving the baby doses of Bromo Quinine.

(Bromo Quinine tablets, made by the Paris Medicine Company, were marketed as “the world’s first cold tablets” in the late 1800s and early 1900s.)

The baby seemed to get better; he was able to sleep.

Before leaving the next day, the salesman gave the Crims his Bromo Quinine and told them how to use it.

The baby’s health continued to improve. Eventually, he made a full recovery.

A grateful Lizzie decided to name her baby “Laxative Bromo Quinine Crim” after the medicine that she believed saved his life.

She wrote to the Paris Medicine Company, and the company was so impressed with her story that they added her letter and a photo of Bromo (as he came to be known) to their packaging. They also said they’d pay Bromo’s college tuition and hire him as an employee.

Bromo didn’t end up going to college or working for the Paris Medicine Company, though. Instead, he went into the grocery business. He married a woman named Ethel and had several children.

Sadly, he didn’t live long. Laxative Bromo Quinine Crim passed away in 1928 while still in his mid-20s.

What are your thoughts on the name Laxative?

P.S. As this story implies, babies born in earlier times weren’t always named at birth. Another example of this is Emancipation Proclamation Coggeshall.

Sources:

  • Ensor, Dennis Kelso. Texas Pioneer Chronicles: The Life And Times Of The Ensor, Kelso & Crim Families Since 1856. Self-published. Charleston: CreateSpace, 2009.
  • McAlavy, Don. “Some baby names don’t come from books.” Clovis News Journal 17 Nov. 2006.
  • Texas Birth Index – FamilySearch.org

Image: E. W. Grove Laxative Bromo Quinine | National Museum of American History