How popular is the baby name Washington 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 Washington.

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Popularity of the baby name Washington


Posts that mention the name Washington

Creative Brazilian baby names: Nausea, Welfare, Barrigudinha

The LA Times published an interesting article on Brazilian baby names several years ago (in 1999). Here are some highlights:

Brazilian parents who like creative spellings tend to gravitate toward the letters K, W and Y because — at the time the article was written — these letters were not technically part of Brazilian Portuguese.

[In 2009, Brazil enacted spelling reforms that officially added K, W and Y to the alphabet. I’m not sure if this has made them any less desirable for baby names.]

Examples of creative spellings: Tayane (Diana), Kerolyne (Carolina).

Sometimes, parents choose names inspired by Jogo do Bicho (“the animal game” or “the animal lottery”). This is “a kind of urban numbers game based on superstitions that imbue animals and dates with good luck.”

Example of an animal lottery name: Antonio Treze de Junio de Mil Novecentos e Dezesette (June 13, 1917).

There are distinct class differences when it comes to naming:

  • In Rio’s favelas (slums), “Edson, Robson, Anderson and Washington are favorite first names […] partly because of the percussive “on” sound and partly because American-sounding names are seen as cool and classy.”
  • Many lower-middle-class parents go for more elaborate names. The Rio registrar explaining these class differences said that, “[b]y seeking status, some cross the line into silliness.” He gave examples like Siddartha, Michael Jackson, Concetta Trombetta Diletta and Marafona (synonym for prostitute).
  • Many wealthy and upwardly mobile parents stick to simple, classic names.

“Brazilian law forbids names that could expose children to ridicule,” but the law is rarely enforced. For instance, the following names made it through…

  • Antonio Morrendo das Dores (Dying of Pain)
  • Barrigudinha (Little-Bellied Girl)
  • Ben Hur
  • Colapso Cardiaco (Cardiac Collapse)
  • D’Artagnan
  • Flavio Cavalcanti Rei da Televisao (King of Television)
  • Nausea
  • Nostradamus
  • Onurb (the reversed spelling of his surname, Bruno)
  • Onurd (brother of Onurb)
  • Saddam Hussein
  • Skylab
  • Tchaikovsky Johannsen Adler Pryce Jackman Faier Ludwin Zolman Hunter Lins (goes by “Tchai”)
  • Waterloo
  • Welfare (He said he was named after his father. “My grandfather’s name was Moacir, which in the Tupi Guarani indigenous language means Bad Omen. So he named my father Welfare, because it meant well-being, which was the opposite. And there was a famous English soccer player in Sao Paulo named Harry Welfare.”)
  • Xerox

Do you know anyone from Brazil with an interesting name or name story?

Sources:

American men with presidential names

Over at the New York Times photojournalism blog Lens, Patrick Witty has just finished a series of blog posts about New York-area males with presidential names. In one of his posts, he says:

Some of the presidential doppelgängers I met over the past nine months were named to honor the great men who have occupied the Oval Office; others inherited the name from their fathers. Regardless, living with such a name can be a burden.

He was able to track down 11 men and one baby with the names Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon, John F. Kennedy, Herbert Hoover, Calvin Coolidge, Ulysses Grant, Abraham Lincoln, John Quincy Adams, Thomas Jefferson and George Washington. Interesting stuff. (The photos are cool as well.)

P.S. Ever wonder how many presidents were named after family members?

Literary names for Halloween: Ichabod, Lenore, Henry, Edward

Here are a few literature names in honor of Halloween, which is this Friday…

Ichabod (from Washington Irving’s “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow”):

On mounting a rising ground, which brought the figure of his fellow-traveller in relief against the sky, gigantic in height, and muffled in a cloak, Ichabod was horror-struck on perceiving that he was headless!–but his horror was still more increased on observing that the head, which should have rested on his shoulders, was carried before him on the pommel of his saddle!

Lenore (from Edgar Allan Poe‘s “The Raven”):

Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before;
But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token,
And the only word there spoken was the whispered word, “Lenore?”
This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the word, “Lenore!”–”
Merely this, and nothing more.

Henry and Edward (from Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde):

The evil side of my nature […] was less robust and less developed than the good which I had just deposed. Again, in the course of my life, which had been, after all, nine tenths a life of effort, virtue and control, it had been much less exercised and much less exhausted. And hence, as I think, it came about that Edward Hyde was so much smaller, slighter and younger than Henry Jekyll.

And, if none of the above work for you, there are 26 more in Edward Gorey’s Gashlycrumb Tinies:

I is for Ida who drowned in a lake.
J is for James who took lye by mistake.
K is for Kate who was struck with an axe.
L is for Leo who swallowed some tacks.
M is for Maud who was swept out to sea.
N is for Neville who died of ennui.

What other good literature names can you come up with for Halloween?

P.S. – Last year’s Halloween post was on names from scary movies.