How popular is the baby name Ted 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 Ted.
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Tuesday’s post about the Victorian-style Tylney Hall Hotel reminded me of a list of Victorian-era names that I’ve had bookmarked forever.
The list was created by amateur genealogist G. M. Atwater as a resource for writers. It contains names and name combinations that were commonly seen in the U.S. from the 1840s to the 1890s. Below is the full list (with a few minor changes).
| Victorian Era Female Names | Victorian Era Male Names |
|---|---|
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Which female name and male name do you like best?
Keanu Reeves was born in Lebanon and raised mostly in Canada. But he has ties to Hawaii through his father, and this explains his Hawaiian first name.
What does “Keanu” mean? It’s made up of two Hawaiian words: ke, meaning “the,” and anu, meaning “cool,” “coolness,” or “cold.” So the name literally means “the coolness” or “the cold.”
You can see these two words together in various Hawaiian-language phrases. “Ua loa’a i ke anu” means “to catch a cold,” for instance, while “pi’i ke anu” means “to get chills.”
The name Keanu was used rarely in the U.S. — Hawaii included — until the release of the 1989 movie Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, which co-starred Keanu Reeves as Ted (Theodore) Logan. The very next year, the name started appearing in the U.S. baby name data:
The highest usage so far was in 1995, right around the time the movie Speed (1994) was popular.
What are your thoughts on the name Keanu?
Source: Pukui, Mary Kawena and Samuel H. Elbert. Hawaiian Dictionary. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1986.
When you sign your first name, you use one hand. But when you type it, chances are you need to use both hands — even if your name is a short as Emma, Gus or Ty.
Have you ever wondered which names can be touch-typed on the standard QWERTY keyboard with one hand only? Me too, so I came up with some lists…
How funny is it that Dexter, which comes directly from the Latin word for “right,” is typed with the left hand only?
I realize that QWERTY “handedness” is not a major baby-naming factor for most people, but I do think it would be cute to pair a one-handed name with another one-handed name — maybe a surname (Teresa Garza, Phillip Hill) or a twin name (Edward & John, Grace & Lily, Zara & Milo). What do you think?
Image: Adapted from Apple Macintosh Plus Extended Keyboard by MagicTom13 under CC BY-SA 3.0.
