How popular is the baby name Sara 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 Sara.

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Popularity of the baby name Sara


Posts that mention the name Sara

Popular baby names in Norway, 2014

Flag of Norway
Flag of Norway

According to data from Statistics Norway, the most popular baby names in Norway in 2014 were Nora/Norah and Lucas/Lukas.

Here are Norway’s top 10 girl names and top 10 boy names of 2014:

Girl NamesBoy Names
1. Nora/Norah, 434 baby girls
2. Emma, 418
3. Sara/Sarah, 404
4. Sofie/Sophie, 388
5. Emilie, 358
6. Anna, 327
7. Linnea/Linea, 326
8. Thea/Tea, 323
9. Maja/Maia/Maya, 323
10. Sofia/Sophia, 315		1. Lucas/Lukas, 448 baby boys
2. William, 438
3. Markus/Marcus, 423
4. Emil, 419
5. Oskar/Oscar, 389
6. Mathias/Matias, 382
7. Magnus, 377
8. Filip/Fillip/Philip, 372
9. Jakob/Jacob, 371
10. Aksel/Axel, 363

Though Mohammad didn’t feature in the national top 10, it was the #1 boy name in the capital city of Oslo. (The #1 girl name there was Nora.)

In contrast with the above, these are Norway’s top 10 female and male names overall:

Female NamesMale Names
1. Anne, 61k females
2. Inger, 31k
3. Kari, 26k
4. Marit, 26k
5. Ingrid, 24k
6. Liv, 23k
7. Eva, 19k
8. Anna, 18k
9. Maria, 18k
10. Ida, 18k		1. Jan, 49k males
2. Per, 38k
3. Bjørn, 38k
4. Ole, 31k
5. Lars, 30k
6. Kjell, 27k
7. Knut, 25k
8. Svein, 25k
9. Arne, 24k
10. Thomas, 24k

The only earlier list I have for Norway is from 2010, but more lists (and more names from the 2014 list) are available via the first link below.

Sources: Navn – SSB, ‘Nora’ and ‘Lucas’ Most Popular Names

Image: Adapted from Flag of Norway (public domain)

Popular baby names in Italy, 2013

Flag of Italy
Flag of Italy

Commenter skizzo recently asked me to check on Italy’s 2014 baby name rankings. They aren’t out yet, but the 2013 list is, and since I’ve never posted a popularity list for Italy before, I thought I’d go ahead and post the older list while we wait for the newer one.

According to data from Istituto nazionale di statistica (Istat), the most popular baby names in Italy in 2013 were Sofia and Francesco.

Here are Italy’s top 10 girl names and top 10 boy names of 2013:

Girl Names

  1. Sofia
  2. Giulia
  3. Aurora
  4. Emma
  5. Giorgia
  6. Martina
  7. Chiara
  8. Sara
  9. Alice
  10. Gaia

Boy Names

  1. Francesco
  2. Alessandro
  3. Andrea
  4. Lorenzo
  5. Mattia
  6. Matteo
  7. Gabriele
  8. Leonardo
  9. Riccardo
  10. Tommaso

Check out Francesco’s rise in usage from 2012 to 2013, no doubt due to the election of Pope Francis in March of 2013:

Baby name Francesco sees rise in usage in Italy, 2013

Funny thing is, Francesco has long been Italy’s most popular boy name, so in 2013 it just become more dominantly popular.

And what’s the difference between Mattia and Matteo? Not much — they’re just the Italian forms of Matthias and Matthew, which are derived from the same Hebrew root name.

For earlier sets of data from Italy, click the link below. Istat currently offers top 50 lists going back to 1999.

Source: How many babies are named…? – Istat

Image: Adapted from Flag of Italy (public domain). Graph from Istat.

Was this the first baby named after Shakespeare’s Juliet?

Juliet (1888) by Philip H. Calderon
Painting of Juliet

English actor Richard Burbage and English playwright William Shakespeare were close friends. So close that Burbage named his first daughter Juliet, very likely after the character from Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet.

So Juliet Burbage, who was born in 1608 and only lived a few months, could have been the very first baby girl in history to be named after the famous character.

Burbage and his wife Winifred also had children named Richard, Francis, Anne, Winifred, Julia (probably named in honor of her deceased older sister), William and Sara. Some speculate that Anne and William were named after William Shakespeare and his wife Anne, but there’s no way to know for sure.

Have you ever met anyone named Juliet? Do you like the name?

Sources:

  • Collier, J. Payne. The History of English Dramatic Poetry to the Time of Shakespeare; and Annals of the Stage to the Restoration. London: George Bell & Sons, 1879.
  • Neil, Samuel. Shakespeare. London: Houlston and Wright, 1861.
  • Wilson, Ian. Shakespeare: The Evidence: Unlocking the Mysteries of the Man and His Work. New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 1999.

Baby name story: Sacvan

Canadian academic Sacvan Bercovitch (1933-2014)
Sacvan Bercovitch

Canadian academic Sacvan Bercovitch has an interesting first name. How did he get it? The story begins with his parents:

Bercovitch is the son of Alexander Bercovitch and Bryna Avrutik, Jews born in the Ukraine in the 1890s who grew up during a time of deep poverty, social upheaval, and periodic pogroms.

Alexander and Bryna, both “idealistic communists,” ended up having three children:

Circumstances took them to Moscow, where their first daughter, Sara (later Sylvia) was born; then to Ashkhabad, Turkestan, where their second daughter, Ninel (Lenin spelled backwards), was born. In 1926 they emigrated to Montreal with their two daughters, helped by Bryna’s brothers, who had preceded her. In October 1933 their son Sacvan (his name an amalgamation of Sacco and Vanzetti) was born.

Sacco and Vanzetti, of course, is a reference to Italian-American anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, who were convicted of murder (perhaps wrongly) and sentenced to death in the 1920s.

Thoughts on Sacvan?

(This one is reminding me of the Swedish baby named Alfred Zola Labori Dreyfus.)

Sources: