How popular is the baby name Robert 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 Robert.

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Popularity of the baby name Robert


Posts that mention the name Robert

Babies named for the Battle of Trafalgar

Battle of Trafalgar (1805)
Battle of Trafalgar

The Battle of Trafalgar — during which an outnumbered Royal Navy fleet (under Horatio Nelson) soundly defeated a combined French and Spanish fleet (under Napoleon Bonaparte) — took place off the south-western coast of Spain, near Cape Trafalgar, on October 21, 1805.

The battle cost Nelson his life, but the decisive victory “cemented Britain’s reputation as ruler of the seas.”

Dozens of babies in England were given the name “Trafalgar,” typically as a middle, over the next few years. Most of them were boys, but several were girls. Some examples…

  • John Trafalgar Black, b. 1806 in England
  • John Trafalgar Cotton, b. 1807 in England
  • Joseph Trafalgar Dowding, b. circa 1806 in England
  • Jane Trafalgar Grapes, b. 1805 in England
    • Among her siblings were William Nile (b. circa 1798), Charles Wellington (b. circa 1811), and Charlotte Waterloo (b. circa 1815) — likely named for the Battle of the Nile, the Duke of Wellington, and the Battle of Waterloo.
  • William Trafalgar Hannah, b. 1806 in England
  • Richard Trafalgar Hillgrove, b. 1807 in England
  • Robert Trafalgar May, b. 1807 in England
  • Louisa Trafalgar Priske, b. 1805 in England
  • John Trafalgar Salmon, b. 1805 in England
  • Samuel Trafalgar Sparks, b. 1807 in England

A good number of these babies — including Nelson Trafalgar Black (b. 1805 in Scotland) and Horatio Trafalgar Taylor (b. 1806 in England) — were also named in honor of the late admiral.

The Spanish place-name Trafalgar can be traced back to a pair of Arabic words. The first, taraf, means “edge, extremity” (in reference to the cape itself), and the second may mean “west.”

Sources: Battle of Trafalgar – Wikipedia, Battle of Trafalgar – Britannica, Battle of Trafalgar Timeline – National Maritime Museum, Cape Trafalgar – Wikipedia, FamilySearch.org

Image: Adapted from Battle of Trafalgar (1836) by William Clarkson Stanfield

Unusual baby name: Treb

"Balloon guy" Treb Heining (in late 2024)
Treb Heining

Since the early 1990s, the annual New Year’s Eve celebration in Times Square has featured a confetti drop at midnight. The man behind the confetti? Treb Heining.

A self-described “balloon guy,” Treb has also designed balloon décor for major events such as the Super Bowl, the Academy Awards, and the Olympics.

Treb was born in 1954 to Bert and Joan Heining of California. His first name is simply his father’s name, spelled backwards.

The curious name Treb has never popped up in the U.S. baby name data, likely because most of the people called “Treb” are actually named Trebor, the reverse of Robert. More than 500 baby boys named Trebor are accounted for in the data.

Many of these Trebors were no doubt named after various Roberts. Dozens of the Trebors I found in the records, for instance, had fathers named Robert. Two examples…

Similarly, dozens of the females I found named Treba had fathers with -bert names (like Robert, Albert, Elbert, and Herbert). Two more examples…

What are your thoughts on the names Treb, Trebor, and Treba?

Sources:

Image: Screenshot of a 2025 NBC New York news video

Was the baby name Elfrida influenced by a quiz show cheater in 1958?

Game show contestant Elfrida von Nardroff (1925-2021)
Elfrida von Nardroff

In 1958, six Elf-names that had dropped out of the U.S. baby name data suddenly re-emerged. Altogether, they were given to more than 100 baby girls:

195719581959
Elfreda.339
Elfrida.28†5
Elfreida.15†7
Elfredia.13†.
Elfrieda.1111
Elfriede.5.
†Peak usage

What caused this renewed interest in Elf-names?

Game show contestant Elfrida von Nardroff, who appeared on the infamous TV quiz show Twenty-One for 21 weeks straight in 1958.

Low-stakes game shows had been on television since the very beginning, but high-stakes quiz shows like Twenty-One didn’t emerge until the latter half of the 1950s, following a 1954 Supreme Court ruling that TV jackpots — awarded for answering questions correctly — did not constitute gambling.

The first high-stakes quiz show, The $64,000 Question, started airing weekly on CBS in June of 1955. An instant hit, The $64,000 Question dethroned I Love Lucy to become the most-watched program in the nation during the 1955-56 television season.

Among the many quiz shows that followed was Twenty-One, which premiered on NBC in September of 1956.

Described as “the most demanding and sophisticated of all quiz shows” by Time magazine, Twenty-One featured two contestants — a champion and a challenger — who stood inside separate isolation booths (and could therefore neither hear nor see one another). The contestants took turns answering trivia questions asked by host Jack Barry. The first contestant to reach 21 points was the winner.

Game show contestant Elfrida von Nardroff (1925-2021)
Elfrida von Nardroff

Elfrida von Nardroff, a 32-year-old personnel manager from Brooklyn (and the daughter of a Columbia University physics professor), first appeared on the show in February of 1958. She won, and viewers followed along as she kept winning, week after week:

  • On March 10th (her 4th appearance) Elfrida “defeated a lawyer and a foreign service officer…to run her prize money to $70,000.” The questions she answered were about “U. S. Presidents, English literature, Africa and the 1920s.”
  • On April 7th (her 8th appearance), Elfrida “topped the $100,000 mark.”
  • On May 26 (her 15th appearance), Elfrida’s winnings were up to $216,500. The New York Times noted that she was now “the biggest money winner on a single television quiz program.”
  • On June 9 (her 17th appearance), Elfrida “breezed through questions of fictional romance and musical composers…to run her earnings to $248,000.”
    • In mid-June, NBC president Robert W. Sarnoff noted that “millions” of new viewers had tuned in to the show thanks to newspaper coverage of Elfrida’s progress.
  • On June 23 (her 19th appearance), Elfrida’s winnings were up to $253,500.
  • On July 7 (her 21st appearance), Elfrida “faltered on a question about a Nazi leader” and was finally defeated by her challenger (a high school administrator).

She walked away with $220,500 — “the most money ever won on a television show” at that time — and Twenty-One finished 18th in the Nielsen ratings for the 1957–58 season.

In the months that followed, however, the public discovered that many of TV’s quiz shows had been rigged. While there were no laws prohibiting the fixing of game shows, the allegations caused ratings to plummet, and the networks began pulling these shows off the air. (Twenty-One was canceled in mid-October.)

In August of 1958, the Manhattan district attorney convened a grand jury to investigate television quiz shows. About 150 people (a mix of contestants and employees) testified before the grand jury over the course of nine months. Two-thirds of the witnesses — Elfrida included — denied under oath that the shows had been fixed. Manhattan Assistant D.A. Joseph Stone later wrote,

Nothing in my experience prepared me for the mass perjury that took place before the first grand jury investigating TV quiz rigging, on the part of scores of well-educated people who had no trouble understanding what was at stake. Several of them in fact had law degrees.

In October of 1959, the House Special Subcommittee on Legislative Oversight began its own investigation of television quiz shows. About a year later, acting upon the committee’s recommendation, Congress added an amendment to the Communications Act of 1934 that made it a federal offense “to rig a ‘purportedly bona fide’ contest of knowledge, skill, or chance.”

In late 1960, twenty former quiz-show winners, including Elfrida, were arrested and charged with second-degree perjury. Elfrida eventually pled guilty and received a suspended sentence.

The name Elfrida can be traced back to the Anglo-Saxon name Ælfþryð, which is made up of Old English elements meaning “elf” and “strength.” What are your thoughts on the name?

Sources:

Images: Clippings from Life magazine (23 Jun. 1958) and the cover of Cosmopolitan magazine (Sept. 1959)

How did Jet magazine’s “Beauties of the Week” influence baby names?

Taren Sims as the "Beauty of the Week" in Jet magazine (Oct. 1981)
Taren Sims in Jet magazine

Jet was a pocket-sized weekly magazine focused on African-American news and entertainment. While it was being published in print (1951-2014), Jet was “a ubiquitous presence in black communities” — particularly in places like barbershops and beauty parlors.

Most issues of Jet included a full-length portrait of an attractive young woman wearing a swimsuit. The accompanying text revealed the woman’s name and location, plus a few other details (e.g., body measurements, occupation, college major, and/or hobbies). In late 1975, Jet began referring to each of these women as the “Beauty of the Week” in the table of contents.

We’ve already discussed several baby name-popularizing “Beauties of the Week” (Annazette, Debraca, Meyosha, Tchanavian, and Tijwana), but how many others had a similar effect?

To find out, I flipped through every single 20th-century issue of Jet, gathered all the “Beauty of the Week” names, and checked these names in the U.S. baby name data. The result? More than two dozen likely cases of influence…

Ouida
Ouida Williams, a dancer from St. Louis, was featured in Jet in July of 1953. The baby name Ouida saw an uptick in usage the same year.

Meiling
Mei Ling Leung, a college student in Los Angeles, was featured in Jet in April of 1960. The baby name Meiling debuted in the data the same year.

Dollicia Holloway as the featured beauty in Jet magazine (Oct. 1961)
Dollicia Holloway in Jet magazine

Dollicia
Dollicia Holloway, a legal secretary from Long Island, was featured in Jet in October of 1961. The baby name Dollicia debuted in the data the next year.

Kaaron
Kaaron Sidney, a keypunch operator from Chicago, was featured in Jet in May of 1962. The baby name Kaaron was a one-hit wonder in the data the same year.

Darien
Darien Daniels, an actress from Los Angeles, was featured in Jet in June of 1968. The baby name Darien saw an uptick in usage (as a girl name) the same year.

Sharmeen
Sharmeen Caldwell, a model from Memphis, was featured in Jet in November of 1972. The baby name Sharmeen debuted in the data the same year.

Cherisse
Cherisse Wilson, a model from Detroit, was featured in Jet in September of 1973. The baby name Cherisse saw increased usage the same year.

Cherron
Cher’ron Burrell, a beauty pageant winner from Dallas, was featured in Jet in April of 1974. The baby name Cherron peaked in usage the same year.

Kimara
Kimara Parker, a model from Chicago, was featured in Jet in October of 1974. The baby name Kimara saw increased usage the same year.

Shayla Simpson as the featured beauty in Jet magazine (Apr. 1977)
Shayla Simpson in Jet magazine

Shayla
Shayla Simpson, a model from Washington, D.C., was featured in Jet in April of 1977. The baby name Shayla saw increased usage the same year. (From 1977 to 1991, Shayla Simpson was also the commentator of the Ebony Fashion Fair. Both Jet and Ebony ran photos of her regularly during this period. On her website, Shayla notes that “she has met over 350 babies who were named “Shayla” in her honor.”)

Treina
Treina Booker, a model from Los Angeles, was featured in Jet in March of 1979. The baby name Treina peaked in usage the same year.

Nivia
Nivia Souffront, a model of Puerto Rican descent, was featured in Jet in December of 1979. The baby name Nivia peaked in usage the next year.

Lavasia
Lavasia Butcher, a model from Los Angeles, was featured in Jet in February of 1981. The same year, the baby name Lavasia both debuted in the data and reached peak usage.

Lakaii
Lakaii S. Tae, a singer and dancer from Los Angeles, was featured in Jet in October of 1981. The baby name Lakaii debuted in the data the same year.

Taren
Taren Sims, a flight attendant from Jersey City, was featured in Jet in October of 1981. The baby name Taren saw a spike in usage the next year.

Cassaundra
Cassaundra Anderson, an aspiring model from Richmond, Virginia, was featured in Jet in July of 1982. The baby name Cassaundra saw increased usage the same year.

Chartese
Chartese Berry, a student at Georgetown University, was featured in Jet in February of 1983. The baby name Chartese was a one-hit wonder in the data the same year.

Jakki Davis as the "Beauty of the Week" in Jet magazine (Sept. 1984)
Jakki Davis in Jet magazine

Jakki
Jakki Davis, a Cancerian from Seattle, was featured in Jet in September of 1984. The baby name Jakki saw an uptick in usage the same year.

Fotini
Fotini Williams, a secretary from Chicago, was featured in Jet in October of 1984. The baby name Fotini saw an uptick in usage the same year.

Yoshani
Yoshani Wije, “a native of the island nation Sri Lanka,” was featured in Jet in January of 1989. The baby name Yoshani was a one-hit wonder in the data the same year.

Tai
Tai Keart, a model and dancer from Los Angeles, was featured in Jet in April of 1991. The baby name Tai saw an uptick in usage the same year.

Tonisha
Tonisha Joyner, a nursery school teacher from Chesapeake, Virginia, was featured in Jet in September of 1992. The baby name Tonisha saw increased usage the same year.

Anetra
Anetra Reinhart, a model from Louisville, was featured in Jet in May of 1993. The baby name Anetra saw an uptick in usage the same year.

Najha Phillips as the "Beauty of the Week" in Jet magazine (Aug. 1993)
Najha Phillips in Jet magazine

Najha
Najha Phillips, a model from Washington, D.C., was featured in Jet in August of 1993. The baby name Najha debuted in the data the same year.

Talani
Talani Rabb, a model from Hawthorne, California, was featured in Jet in March of 1996. The baby name Talani debuted in the data the next year. (In 2009, Talani married Wu-Tang Clan member Robert Fitzgerald “RZA” Diggs — whose stage name became a baby name in 2023.)

Irian
Irian Thomas, a college student, was featured in Jet in March of 1999. The baby name Irian saw an uptick in usage the next year.

Which of the above names do you like the most?

P.S. Covergirl Jacy De Souza was also a two-time “Beauty of the Week” in 1961…

Sources:

Images: Clippings from Jet magazine (12 Oct. 1961; 7 Apr. 1977; 29 Oct. 1981; 3 Sept. 1984; 30 Aug. 1993)