How popular is the baby name Souwester 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 Souwester.

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Popularity of the baby name Souwester


Posts that mention the name Souwester

Sea-themed names given to sea-born babies

Earlier this year, singer Ed Sheeran welcomed a baby girl named Lyra Antarctica Seaborn Sheeran. She wasn’t actually born at sea — “Seaborn” is her mother’s surname — but did you know that many of the babies named “Seaborn” throughout history were in fact born at sea?

And it doesn’t stop at “Seaborn.” These sea-born babies got all sorts of interesting names hinting at the circumstances of their birth. Here’s a round-up of what I’ve spotted in the records…

Sea-inspired names:

  • Sea
  • Seaborn (The earliest American example I know of is Seaborn Cotton, born in August of 1633 while as his parents were traveling from England to New England. Notably, he was the uncle of Cotton Mather.)
  • Seabourn
  • Seaborne
  • Seabourne
  • Seafield
  • Seaford
  • Seaforth (e.g., Charles Seaforth Stewart)
  • Sealine
  • Seaman
  • Sea-Mercy (This one comes from Sea-Mercy Adams, a man who got married in Philadelphia in 1686.)

Ocean-inspired names:

Marine-inspired names:

  • Marina
  • Marine
  • Mariner
  • Marino

Atlantic-inspired names:

  • Atlanta
  • Atlante
  • Atlantia
  • Atlantic (One was Atlantic Seaborn Ford, born in 1863. Another was Atlantic Missouri Linne, born in 1889.)
  • Atlantica
  • Atlantika

Pacific-inspired names:

  • Pacific
  • Pacifica
  • Pacifico

And, finally, all of the other sea-birth-inspired baby names I’ve seen:

If you had a baby on the open ocean, what would you name that baby?

Image: Salem Harbor (1853) by Fitz Henry Lane

Baby born during gale, named Sou’Wester

rough seas

In January of 1880, Anglican vicar W. R. Tate “baptized a boy, in the parish church of Stone, near Dartford [in Kent], by the name of Sou’Wester.”

His parents were hawkers, passing through the parish in a “house on wheels,” and he was named after an uncle, who had received a similar name from having been born at sea during a sou’westerly gale.

I wish Tate had mentioned the family surname in his account, so that I could track down these Sou’Westers in the records…

P.S. A baby born at sea during rough weather several centuries earlier was named Storm Vanderzee.

Source: Tate, W. R. “Curious Christian Names.” Notes and Queries 7 Feb. 1880: 125.

Image by Jakob Owens from Unsplash