How popular is the baby name Silver 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 Silver.

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Popularity of the baby name Silver


Posts that mention the name Silver

Popular baby names in Colorado, 1997

Flag of Colorado
Flag of Colorado

Back in 1997, the western U.S. state of Colorado welcomed 56,505 babies.

What were the most popular names among these babies? Hannah and Jacob, according to data from the Health Statistics Section of Colorado’s Department of Public Health and Environment.

The state also revealed the top names within each of its three largest racial/ethnic groups, which it defined as “White/non-Hispanic,” “White/Hispanic,” and “Black.”

Number of babiesTop girl nameTop boy name
White/non-Hispanic38,729 (69%)HannahJacob
White/Hispanic12,951 (23%)JessicaJose
Black2,582 (5%)JasmineIsaiah

Here are Colorado’s top 50 girl names (overall) and top 50 boy names (overall) of 1997:

Girl names

  1. Hannah
  2. Emily
  3. Jessica
  4. Sarah
  5. Madison
  6. Samantha
  7. Taylor
  8. Alexandra
  9. Ashley
  10. Megan
  11. Elizabeth
  12. Rachel
  13. Alyssa
  14. Alexis
  15. Lauren
  16. Emma
  17. Kayla
  18. Morgan
  19. Amanda
  20. Brianna
  21. Jennifer
  22. Jordan
  23. Abigail
  24. Victoria
  25. Nicole
  26. Brittany
  27. Rebecca
  28. Danielle
  29. Katherine
  30. Sierra
  31. Anna
  32. Mariah
  33. Olivia
  34. Amber
  35. Sydney
  36. Stephanie
  37. Jasmine
  38. Brooke
  39. Haley
  40. Maria
  41. Kaitlyn
  42. Gabrielle
  43. Savannah
  44. Allison
  45. Marissa
  46. Bailey
  47. Courtney
  48. Sara
  49. Erin
  50. Mackenzie

Boy names

  1. Jacob
  2. Michael
  3. Matthew
  4. Joshua
  5. Austin
  6. Tyler
  7. Andrew
  8. Christopher
  9. Nicholas
  10. Brandon
  11. Daniel
  12. Ryan
  13. Joseph
  14. Zachary
  15. David
  16. Alexander
  17. Anthony
  18. John
  19. James
  20. Benjamin
  21. Kyle
  22. Samuel
  23. William
  24. Justin
  25. Jonathan
  26. Dylan
  27. Christian
  28. Jordan
  29. Cody
  30. Robert
  31. Nathan
  32. Aaron
  33. Thomas
  34. Eric
  35. Connor
  36. Cameron
  37. Jose
  38. Noah
  39. Adam
  40. Logan
  41. Isaiah
  42. Sean
  43. Gabriel
  44. Caleb
  45. Jack
  46. Cole
  47. Kevin
  48. Trevor
  49. Ethan
  50. Ian

How do these rankings stack up against the U.S. Social Security Administration’s 1997 rankings for Colorado?

The boy names look similar, but there are two significant discrepancies among the girl names: Alexandra ranked 11 spots lower (19th vs. 8th) and Gabrielle ranked 33 spots lower (75th vs. 42nd) on the federal government’s list.

Other names bestowed in Colorado in 1997 included “Elway, Jamaica, and Mars for baby boys, and October, November, Paradise, and Rejoice for baby girls.”

Elway was no doubt inspired by John Elway, the longtime Denver Broncos quarterback who was about to lead the team to its first Super Bowl victory (in January of 1998).

Speaking of Colorado baby names with historical significance…here are posts about Denver (b. 1859), Colorado (b. 1859), Salida (b. 1881), and Silver Dollar (b. 1889).

Update, Nov. 2025: I recently stumbled upon a newspaper article that listed the top 10 names per gender among Colorado’s Hispanic and Black babies of 1997.

These were the top 10 girl names and 10 boy names among Colorado’s Hispanic babies:

Girl names, HispanicBoy names, Hispanic
1. Jessica
2. Maria
3. Jennifer
4. Jasmine
5. Alexis
6. Alyssa
7. Mariah
8. Alexandra
9. Angelica
10. Stephanie		1. Jose
2. Luis
3. Jesus
4. Daniel
5. Juan
6. David
7. Carlos
8. Alejandro
9. Michael
10. Anthony

And these were the top 10 girl names and 10 boy names among Colorado’s Black babies:

Girl names, BlackBoy names, Black
1. Jasmine
2. Taylor
3. Alexis
4. Ashley
5. Brianna
6. Destiny
7. Danielle
8. Dominique
9. Imani
10. Aaliyah		1. Isaiah
2. Elijah
3. Malik
4. Brandon
5. Jordan
6. Michael
7. David
8. Joshua
9. James
10. Aaron

Sources:

Image: Adapted from Flag of Colorado (public domain)

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

Popular baby names in British Columbia (Canada), 2016

According to British Columbia’s Vital Statistics Agency, the most popular baby names in the province in 2016 were Olivia and Lucas.

Here are British Columbia’s top 10 girl names and top 10 boy names of 2016:

Girl Names
1. Olivia, 265 baby girls
2. Emma, 218
3. Charlotte, 194
4. Ava, 185
5. Sophia, 175
6. Chloe, 164
7. Emily, 155
8. Abigail, 152
9. Amelia, 141
10. Evelyn, 138

Boy Names
1. Lucas, 231 baby boys
2. Benjamin, 222
3. Ethan, 213
4. Oliver, 210
5. Liam, 200
6. Noah, 199
7. James, 189
8. William, 186
9. Jacob, 176
10. Owen, 174

In the girls’ top 10, Evelyn replaced Ella.

In the boys’ top 10, Noah, James, and Owen replaced Alexander, Mason, and Hunter.

Names at the other end of the spectrum — used just five times each in 2016 — include:

  • Althea, Blaire, Daya, Emberly, Felicity, Genesis, Hallie, Jaskirat, Lisa, Melissa, Naira, Oona, Patricia, Remy, Silver, Taryn, Uma, Violette, Whitney (girl names)
  • Augustus, Brixton, Cristiano, Duncan, Emilio, Finnian, Gibson, Hassan, Jared, Koa, London, Mantaj, Noel, Rayden, Shea, Tony, Umar, Willem, Zian (boy names)

The top names in 2015 were Emma and Oliver.

According to preliminary 2017 data (covering January 1st to December 15th) the top two names of the current year are likely Olivia and Benjamin.

Sources: Baby’s Most Chosen Names in British Columbia, 2016, British Columbia’s top baby names (prelim. 2017)

What’s your Cape Breton nickname?

A few weeks ago I posted about the baby names Silver and Free Silver, which were bestowed by bimetallism buffs in the 1890s.

Decades later, in the 1930s, Canadian writer Silver Donald Cameron was born.

His name had nothing to do with monetary standards, though. He wasn’t even born a “Silver.” He was simply Donald Cameron until the early 1970s, when he decided to adopt the name Silver to set himself apart from all the other Canadian men named Donald Cameron.

How did he come up with Silver? He didn’t. A friend gave it to him:

“Lard Jasus, b’y,” said folk-singer Tom Gallant, “you need a proper Cape Breton nickname.” I know what he means: Black John MacDonald as distinguished from John The Piper MacDonald and Gimpy John MacDonald and John By-The-Church MacDonald. What are my own characteristics? I’m short: what about Donald The Runt? Or Brief Donald? No, no dignity: if he had called himself Clubfoot George would we remember Lord Byron?

Tom struck a chord in his Yamaha, gazed at me. “That hair,” he said. It’s my most striking feature, prematurely grey hair, set off by black eyebrows and moustache. Don’t ask me how I got that color scheme, ask God: He did it. Children stop me in the street to ask me if I’m wearing a wig. Adults chalk it up to noxious personal habits and secret vices.

“That hair,” said Tom. “That’s it. Silver Donald Cameron.”

Cameron refers to himself as “Silver Donald” all over his website, awesomely.

Nicknames have been a tradition on Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia, Canada, for hundreds of years. They’re particularly popular among the coal miners, and tend to fall into several broad categories: place names, occupational names, patronymics, physical features, and personality traits.

Other nicknames based on physical features don’t tend to be as complimentary as “Silver.” They include “Buffalo Head,” “Potato Nose,” “Saucer Eyes,” “Popeye,” and “Bandy Legs.”

“Alex the Clock” had one arm that was shorter than the other. “Waterloo Dan” had backed into a hot stove in his youth and thereafter sported the brand “Waterloo No. 2” (written backwards) on his bum.

People don’t get to choose their own nicknames on Cape Breton, but let’s pretend for a moment that you live there and you get to choose yours. What would it be?

Sources:

  • Cameron, Donald. “What’s in a Name?” Weekend Magazine 1973.
  • Corbin, Carol and Judith A. Rolls. The Centre of the World at the Edge of a Continent. Sydney, Nova Scotia: University College of Cape Breton Press, 1996.
  • Davey, William and Richard MacKinnon. “Nicknaming Patterns and Traditions among Cape Breton Coal Miners” Journal of the History of the Atlantic Region Spring 2001.
  • MacAdam, Pat. “Cape Breton Nicknames.” Cape Breton Post 16 Jan. 2008.