How popular is the baby name Rudyard 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 Rudyard.

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Popularity of the baby name Rudyard


Posts that mention the name Rudyard

Name quotes #117: Carroll, Sydney, Tosca

double quotation mark

Time for the latest batch of name quotes!

From a recent Daily Mail article about an Englishman named Pele Johnson (who was born in September of 1970 — not long after the 1970 World Cup took place in Mexico):

“[M]y whole life has been shaped by the fact that I’m called Pele. Everywhere I’ve gone, it’s always been about my name first.

“It’s never hindered me in my career or anything, it’s a wonderful thing.”

[…]

His father Anthony Johnson wanted to name him after all the forwards and midfield of the Brazilian team in tribute to them winning the Jules Rimet trophy for the third time three months earlier.

It would have made him Pele Jairzinho Tostao Rivelino Clodoaldo Gerson Johnson.

[…]

Instead, the couple compromised on using two of the team’s names, meaning he was christened Pele Jairzinho Johnson.

From the 2004 book I’m a Believer: My Life of Monkees, Music, and Madness by Mickey Dolenz:

I have three younger sisters. The oldest of the three is “Coco.” Her real name is Gemma Marie, but somewhere along the line I nicknamed her “Coco Sunshine” and it stuck. I don’t think she has ever forgiven me.

From the 1915 article “What’s in a Name?” in Cosmopolitan magazine:

Carroll McComas has done her best to make up to her father, Judge C. C. McComas, for the disappointment she caused him in failing to be born a boy. When he insisted upon going through with his prepared program, notwithstanding her sex, and named her Charles Carroll McComas, her family history records that she dimpled sweetly and never whimpered.

[Stage actress Charles Carroll McComas (1886-1962) and her like-named father were descendants of Charles Carroll, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. Her three older sisters were named Helen, Alice, and Clare.]

From the October 2000 Libertad Digital article “El Tribunal de Elecciones de Honduras rechaza los nombres ‘raros’” (translated):

The National Elections Tribunal (TNE) has announced that it will introduce an initiative to the legislature to prohibit the absurd, obscene or grotesque names of people in Honduras. The measure has been taken because in that country the law does not allow Hondurans to change their names.

The president of the TNE, the liberal Lisandro Quezada, has indicated that “the height of the situation is that there are strange names such as Cruz de Cardán, Silvín, Llanta del Milagro, Bujía and Motor Martínez that, without a doubt, cause annoyance to those who owe them take your whole life.”

[Those five names were inspired by automotive parts: Cruz de Cardán means “Cardan cross,” Silvín (created from the English words sealed beam) means “headlamp,” Llanta del Milagro means “miracle tire,” and Bujía means “spark plug.”]

From a 2017 Cricket Australia article about Trinidadian cricket player Brian Lara:

“So special did Lara consider his inaugural Test hundred [at Sydney Cricket Ground in Sydney, Australia, in early 1993] … [that] when his first daughter was born in 1996 she was christened Sydney. And following a visit to the venue that inspired her naming with her famous father in 2016, she now holds honorary membership at the SCG.”

Finally, here’s what Sports Illustrated learned from Maye Musk last year about the names of the Musk children:

  • Elon (b. 1971) “was named after his mother’s grandfather, John Elon Haldeman.”
  • Kimbal (b. 1972) “was named after the book titled Kim by Nobel Prize-winning author Rudyard Kipling.”
    • During his 2018 Reddit AMA, Kimbal said: “My name means Warrior Chief. It is the name of an english orphan in Rudyard Kipling’s book called Kim (short for Kimball). My parents mispelled [sic] my name on my birth certificate, so I’m Kimbal, not ‘Kimball’.”
  • Tosca (b. 1974) “was named after a girl that Musk’s ex-husband [Errol] had a crush on in high school.”
    • Maye noted: “I didn’t care. I thought the name was pretty. And I liked it and it suited her.”

For more quotes about names, check out the name quotes category.

How did Rudyard Kipling get his name?

Author Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936)
Rudyard Kipling

Where did Bombay-born English writer Joseph Rudyard Kipling, most famous for The Jungle Book, get his memorable middle name?

His parents, John and Alice, got engaged in the summer of 1863 on the shores of Rudyard Lake in Rudyard, Staffordshire, England. Wedding planning finally started in late 1864, after John secured a job in India. The pair married in March of 1865, set off for India a month later, and welcomed Joseph Rudyard, nicknamed “Rud,” at the end of December.

Rudyard Lake had been created in 1799 by damming a brook. It was named for the surrounding settlement of Rudyard, which had existed since at least the early 11th century, when it was called Rudegeard (derived from a pair of Old English words meaning “shrub rue” and “enclosure”).

According to the SSA data, dozens of U.S. baby boys were named Rudyard during the 20th century. Do you like the name Rudyard? Would you consider giving it to a modern baby boy?

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The baby name Lalage

Aerialist Lalage of the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus (circa 1944)
Circus performer Lalage

Lalage’s quirky definition is what first caught my eye.

Horace, the Roman poet, created the name Lalage over two thousand years ago from the ancient Greek word lalagein, meaning “to chatter,” “to prattle,” “to babble,” or (in the case of a bird) “to chirp.” He invented it as a fitting alias for the “sweetly laughing, sweetly talking” woman described in Ode 1.22:

dulce ridentem Lalagen amabo,
dulce loquentem.

The name Lalage has since appeared in other literary works, including the play Politian (1835) by Edgar Allan Poe, the poem “Rimini” (1906) by Rudyard Kipling, and the novel The French Lieutenant’s Woman (1969) by John Fowles.

In The French Lieutenant’s Woman, the mother of the child named Lalage “pronounced it as a dactyl, the g hard.” So: LAL-a-ghee. But I checked other sources (such as this one) and found a variety of pronunciation suggestions.

There are two distinct camps regarding the G: the hard-G camp (lal-a-ghee) and the soft-G camp (lal-a-dgee). I think the soft-G makes the most sense for English speakers, as the English forms of other Greek-origin names (like George and Eugene) also tend to have soft G’s, but that’s just personal opinion.

Lalage has since become the name of an asteroid (822 Lalage) and a genus of birds (the trillers), but my favorite association so far is the mid-20th-century circus performer.

Lalage — whose real name was Hedwig Roth — was an aerialist with Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. According to one circus program, she was a “dusty blonde of French-Swiss origin” and she pronounced her name lä-lä-gay, but she had “given up trying to sell people that idea” because most people assumed it was lä-LÄZH. (See what I mean about the various pronunciations?)

Here’s the first stanza of the poem “Lalage!” (1946) by American poet Charles Olson:

The legs of Lalage toss, and toss, and toss
(l’esprit de femme)
against the canvas of the circus sky

What do you think of the name Lalage? Would it be a good alternative to popular girl names like Lillian and Lily?

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