How popular is the baby name Sherman 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 Sherman.

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Popularity of the baby name Sherman


Posts that mention the name Sherman

Over 100 baby names for 100 years of the U.S. National Park Service

Grand Canyon National Park poster (NPS)

The U.S. National Park Service has a birthday coming up!

When the NPS was created on August 25, 1916, there were only 35 national parks and monuments. (The world’s first, Yellowstone, had been established in 1872.)

Nowadays the agency oversees 411 units. These units are located in the 50 states and beyond, and include national monuments (82), national historic sites (78), national parks (59), national historical parks (50), national memorials (30), national battlefields (11), national seashores (10), national lakeshores (4), national scenic trails (3), and more.

Let’s celebrate the upcoming centennial with more than 100 baby names that pay tribute to the national parks specifically:

Lassen Volcanic National Park poster (NPS)
  • Garland for Garland County, Arkansas, where Hot Springs National Park is located.
  • Gates for Gates of the Arctic National Park & Preserve.
  • Guadalupe for Guadalupe Mountains National Park.
  • Gunnison for Black Canyon of the Gunnison National Park.
    • The park was established in 1999, and Gunnison debuted on the baby name charts the very same year. Did one event cause the other?
  • Jackson for Jackson Hole, where much of Grand Teton National Park is located.
  • Jarvis for Wrangell-St. Elias National Park & Preserve’s Mt. Jarvis.
  • Jefferson for Dry Tortugas National Park’s Fort Jefferson.
  • John for Virgin Islands National Park’s St. John Island.
  • Joshua for Joshua Tree National Park.
  • Kenai for Kenai Fjords National Park.
    • The derivation of Kenai is unknown, but it could come from either Dena’ina Athabascan (“big flat” or “two big flats and river cut-back” or “trees and brush in a swampy marsh”), Russian (“flat barren land”), or Iniut (“black bear”).
  • Kingston or Kingsley for Kings Canyon National Park.
  • Lake for any of the parks featuring lakes, such as Crater Lake National Park, Voyageurs National Park, Lake Clark National Park & Preserve, etc.
  • Lamar for Yellowstone National Park’s Lamar Buffalo Ranch.
  • Lassen for Lassen Volcanic National Park.
  • Lata for the National Park of American Samoa’s Lata Mountain.
  • Lehman for Great Basin National Park’s Lehman Caves.
  • Lewis for Glacier National Park’s Lewis Range.
  • Livingston for Glacier National Park’s Livingston Range.
  • Manning for Saguaro National Park’s Manning Cabin.
  • Mara for Joshua Tree National Park’s Oasis of Mara.
    • In the Serrano language, Mara means “the place of little springs and much grass.”
  • Martin for Katmai National Park & Preserve’s Mt. Martin.
  • Maui for the island of Maui, where Haleakala National Park is located.
  • Mauna for Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park’s Mauna Loa.
  • Miguel for Channel Islands National Park’s San Miguel Island.
  • Olympia for Olympic National Park.
Zion National Park poster (NPS)
  • Parker, Parks, Park, or Parke as a tribute to all national parks.
  • Pele as a symbol of Hawai’i Volcanoes National Park.
  • Prairie for any of the parks featuring a prairie, such as Badlands National Park, Theodore Roosevelt National Park, etc.
  • Pratt for Guadalupe Mountains National Park’s Pratt Cabin.
  • Rainier for Mount Rainier National Park.
  • Ranger as a tribute to all national parks and park rangers.
  • Reef for Capitol Reef National Park.
  • Rhodes for Biscayne National Park’s Old Rhodes Key.
  • Rocky for Rocky Mountain National Park.
  • Roosevelt for Theodore Roosevelt National Park.
  • Rosa for Channel Islands National Park’s Santa Rosa Island.
  • Royale or Royal for Isle Royale National Park.
  • Valley for any of the parks featuring a valley, such as Cuyahoga Valley, Death Valley, Kobuk Valley, etc.
  • Verda or Verdell for Mesa Verde National Park.
  • Virginia for Virgin Islands National Park.
  • Zion for Zion National Park.

For all you national park lovers out there: What other park-inspired names can you come up with?

Sources: List of national parks of the United States – Wikipedia, Quick History of the National Park Service, National Park System (U.S. National Park Service), Kenai Fjords National Park Profile 2015 (PDF)
Images (all from the LOC): Grand Canyon National Park poster, Lassen Volcanic National Park poster, Zion National Park poster

[Latest update: July 2023]

80+ Hidden gems: Rare baby boy names

gems

Want a boy name that’s not popular, but also not unheard of?

I looked through all the names at the bottom of SSA’s 2011 mega-list and found a bunch of hidden gems:

  1. Alaric (48 baby boys)
  2. Alban (12)
  3. Aldous (11)
  4. Aldric (7)
  5. Alphonse (20)
  6. Archibald (14)
  7. Astor (5)
  8. Augustin (50)
  9. Balthazar (13)
  10. Barclay (6)
  11. Barnabas (8)
  12. Bartholomew (19)
  13. Booker (22)
  14. Chadwick (34)
  15. Cyril (41)
  16. Clancy (14)
  17. Claude (44)
  18. Clement (34)
  19. Crispin (21)
  20. Darcy (15)
  21. Dirk (40)
  22. Doyle (10)
  23. Ernst (6)
  24. Ferdinand (20)
  25. Garrick (42)
  26. Giles (20)
  27. Gregor (14)
  28. Griffith (18)
  29. Grover (9)
  30. Gustaf (7); Gustav (29)
  31. Horatio (10)
  32. Hubert (46)
  33. Ignatius (49)
  34. Isidore (7)
  35. Kermit (6)
  36. Lambert (6)
  37. Laird (17)
  38. Laurence (48)
  39. Laurent (9)
  40. Leander (48)
  41. Leith (7)
  42. Lemuel (50)
  43. Lowell (29)
  44. Maxfield (22)
  45. Newton (14)
  46. Nicanor (8)
  47. Norbert (9)
  48. Norris (21)
  49. Ogden (13)
  50. Orson (33)
  51. Osborn (5); Osborne (7)
  52. Oswald (18)
  53. Pascal (25)
  54. Percival (13)
  55. Peregrine (9)
  56. Piers (16)
  57. Regis (10)
  58. Remis (11)
  59. Roscoe (47)
  60. Rudolph (44)
  61. Rufus (39)
  62. Rupert (8)
  63. Sanford (6)
  64. Seymour (6)
  65. Sherman (40)
  66. Sinclair (8)
  67. Tavish (16)
  68. Thane (48)
  69. Tobiah (14)
  70. Walton (14)
  71. Warner (48)
  72. Watson (42)
  73. Webster (8)
  74. Weldon (27)
  75. Werner (11)
  76. Wilbert (42)
  77. Wilbur (20)
  78. Winfield (7)
  79. Winfred (7)
  80. Winslow (10)
  81. York (5)
  82. Zebulon (25)
  83. Zeno (13)

(In some cases, a different spelling of the name is more popular than what’s shown here. For instance, Laurence is rare, but Lawrence is moderately popular.)

Like any of these?

Spot any other good names at the end of the list?

P.S. Here’s the girls’ list.

Image: Adapted from Birmanian rock crystals by Mauro Cateb under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Babies named for Elmer Ellsworth

U.S. Army soldier Elmer E. Ellsworth (1837-1861)
Elmer Ephraim Ellsworth

U.S. Army officer Elmer E. Ellsworth is virtually unknown nowadays, but he was very well known during the 1860s.

Why?

Because he was killed in May of 1861 while trying to confiscate a Confederate flag. This made him the very first Union officer to die in the Civil War.

Here’s how the New York Times concluded Ellsworth’s obituary:

He has been assassinated! His murder was fearfully and speedily revenged. He has lived a brief but an eventful, a public and an honorable life. His memory will be revered, his name respected, and long after the rebellion shall have become a matter of history, his death will be regarded as a martyrdom, and his name will be enrolled upon the list of our country’s patriots.

Ellsworth’s death was the first conspicuous casualty of the War, and it inspired thousands of men to enlist.

It also inspired thousands (yes, literally thousands) of Union-supporting families to name their newborns “Elmer Ellsworth.”

(This is one of those names that makes me wish the SSA data went back further than 1880. I would have loved to see the spike in Elmers in 1861-1862.)

Some of Elmer’s more famous namesakes include…

And less-famous namesakes include…

Others got the names out of order (e.g., Ellsworth Elmer Lesher), and those already in Ellsworth families simply got some version of “Elmer E.” (e.g., Elmer Everett Ellsworth).

The massive number of Elmer Ellsworths born in the early 1860s was even referenced in this anecdote by newspaperman Fred C. Kelly eighty years later:

[A] friend of mine, named Osborn, doesn’t profess to be gifted in second sight, but he once mystified a stranger by telling him that he — the stranger — was born in April, May, or June, 1861; moreover, that he was born in a Union state, and that his father was an enthusiastic Northern sympathizer during the Civil War. He knew all this just by noting that the man’s first two initials were “E.E.” The whole thing was a matter of simple deduction. The man appeared to be the age of one born during the Civil War. Osborn happened to know that one of the great Northern heroes of the Civil War was one Elmer Ellsworth, the first man killed on the Union side. Thousands of babies born during the two or three months following Ellsworth’s death were named “Elmer Ellsworth.” Knowing these facts, the “E.E.” in the man’s name meant much.

Do you have anyone in your family tree named Elmer Ellsworth?

Sources:

P.S. Did you know that today, April 12th, is the anniversary of the start of the Civil War? It’s also is the anniversary of the first manned space flight. These events occurred exactly 100 years apart, weirdly.

Most popular first letter-pairs of U.S. baby names

Mathematically speaking, it’s possible to construct 676 pairs of letters from a 26-letter alphabet. In terms of baby names, though, only a portion of these pairs can realistically be used to start a baby name.

If you look at each of the 6,692 names that have ever ranked among the most popular U.S. (1880-2006), you’ll notice that only 233 two-letter combinations have ever been used at the beginning of the names (e.g., “Na-” for Nancy, or “Ev-” for Evan).

So…what’s the most common pair of starting letters?

Ma– is the clear winner. It starts nearly twice as many names as Ja-, the second most common starting letter-pair.

Here’s a more detailed breakdown of all the two-letter combinations that have started at least 100 ranked baby names:

  • 331 “Ma-” names (Mark, Mandy, Matthias, Marylouise)
  • 177 “Ja-” names (Jane, Jacob, Jaleesa, Jamarion)
  • 174 “Al-” names (Alf, Alice, Alphonso, Albertina)
  • 167 “De-” names (Dean, Della, Devontae, Demetria)
  • 157 “Ka-” names (Karl, Katie, Kameron, Katharina)
  • 144 “Sh-” names (Shane, Sherman, Shanice, Sheridan)
  • 143 “Ca-” names (Cash, Cadence, Carmella, Casimiro)
  • 139 “Da-” names (Dave, Daisy, Damarcus, Dayanara)
  • 125 “El-” names (Elmo, Elyse, Elijah, Eleanora)
  • 121 “Ro-” names (Ross, Roxie, Roosevelt, Rosalinda)
  • 118 “Br-” names (Bruce, Brenda, Bryson, Brittany)
  • 118 “Ch-” names (Chad, Chantal, Christopher, Christiana)
  • 117 “La-” names (Lane, Laura, Lafayette, Lakeshia)
  • 113 “Le-” names (Les, Leah, Leandra, Leopoldo)
  • 102 “Je-” names (Jeff, Jewel, Jennifer, Jeremiah)
  • 101 “Jo-” names (John, Joanna, Joshua, Josefina)
  • 100 “Ar-” names (Art, Arla, Armani, Araceli)