How popular is the baby name Wayne 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 Wayne.

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Popularity of the baby name Wayne


Posts that mention the name Wayne

Classics on the decline: Paul, Jesse, Frank

boy names falling out of fashion

A few weeks back, a reader named Caitlin emailed me a cool list of well-known names that were decreasing in usage. Her list included:

  • Andrew, now ranked 40th — lowest ranking since 1963
  • Michael, now ranked 12th — lowest ranking since 1942
  • David, now ranked 23rd — lowest ranking since 1924

She also generously told me that I could share her findings (thank you Caitlin!).

The names that intrigued me most were the “lowest ever” names: names that had been in the data since 1880, but that saw their lowest usage ever (in terms of rankings) in 2017. Three of the boy names on her list — Paul, Richard, Robert — were “lowest ever” names, so I decided start with these and search for others.

I checked hundreds of potential candidates. Many (like Andrew, Michael, and David) hit a low in 2017, but it wasn’t their all-time low. Many others (like Stanley, Alvin, and Clarence) hit a low recently, but not as recently as 2017.

In the end, I was able to add 15 names to the list:

  • Allen. Ranked 401st in 2017; peak was 71st in the 1940s/1950s.
  • Dennis. Ranked 544th in 2017; peak was 16th in the 1940s.
  • Edgar. Ranked 353rd in 2017; peak was 51st in the 1880s.
  • Edwin. Ranked 332nd in 2017; peak was 52nd in the 1910s/1920s.
  • Frank. Ranked 373rd in 2017; peak was 6th in the 1880s/1890s.
  • Gerald. Ranked 824th in 2017; peak was 19th in the 1930s.
  • Glenn. Ranked 1,288th in 2017; peak was 55th in the 1960s.
  • Herman. Ranked 2,347th in 2017; peak was 44th in the 1880s/1890s.
  • Jerome. Ranked 857th in 2017; peak was 93rd in the 1930s.
  • Jesse. Ranked 186th in 2017; peak was 37th in the 1980s.
  • Lloyd. Ranked 1,570th in 2017; peak was 51st in the 1910s.
  • Martin. Ranked 281st in 2017; peak was 62nd in the 1960s.
  • Marvin. Ranked 559th in 2017; peak was 44th in the 1930s.
  • Paul. Ranked 225th in 2017; peak was 12th in the 1910s/1930s.
  • Raymond. Ranked 293rd in 2017; peak was 14th in the 1910s.
  • Richard. Ranked 175th in 2017; peak was 5th in the 1930s/1940s.
  • Robert. Ranked 65th in 2017; peak was 1st in the 1920s/1930s/1950s.
  • Wayne. Ranked 816th in 2017; peak was 29th in the 1940s.

Interestingly, all 18 have spent time in the top 100. And one, Robert, is still in the top 100. (How long before Robert is out of the top 100, do you think?)

A handful of girl names also saw their lowest-ever rankings in 2017. I’ll post that list next week…

Baby name story: Warren and Wayne

Illinois newspaper editor Warren Watson was born in November of 1950 in Dover, New Hampshire.

His parents, Claire and Charles, were expecting to have a single child “to be named William if a boy. Family history is silent on what a girl would have been named.”

About 15 minutes after the baby (boy) was born, however, Claire gave birth to an unexpected second baby (another boy).

I was born a surprise twin — something that was a fact of life before the ’40s and ’50s. Parents also were surprised at the gender of their babies back then.

Claire, who now had two boys to name, thought it would be unfair to give William — “the traditional family name for a Watson male, going back at least four generations in England and Scotland” — to one son, but not the other.

So “she dug out a baby name book, purchased earlier at the Rexall drug store downtown,” and turned to the page with the entry for William. In the same column, she noticed Warren and Wayne — the names she ultimately chose for her twin sons. (She bestowed the names “in alphabetical order, of course.”)

Source: Watson, Warren. “Life as an alphabetical-order twin.” Telegraph [Alton, Illinois] 29 Aug. 2015.

[Latest update: Nov. 2024]

Popular baby names in College Station (Texas), 2017

Flag of Texas
Flag of Texas

According to the City of College Station (which is located in east-central Texas), the most popular baby names in the city in 2017 were Ava and Jayden.

Here are College Station’s top 3 girl names and top 3 boy names of 2017:

Girl Names
1. Ava, 16 baby girls
2. Emma, 14
3. Camila & Charlotte, 13 each (tie)

Boy Names
1. Jayden, 18 baby boys
2. Elijah & Jackson, 15 each (tie)
3. Noah, 12

The most popular middle names were Grace, Rose, and Marie (for girls) and James, Alexander, and Wayne (for boys).

Some of the less-common College Station baby names included Kansas, Temper, Fable, Joy Peace, and Liv Tyler.

In 2016, the top two names were Riley and Aiden.

Sources: Jayden, Ava CS’s most popular baby names in 2017, Aiden, Riley CS’s most-popular baby names in 2016

Image: Adapted from Flag of Texas (public domain)

Where did the baby name Sakeena come from in 1957?

The album "Cu-Bop" (1957) by Art Blakey and His Jazz Messengers.
Album “Cu-Bop” (1957)

The eye-catching name Sakeena debuted in the U.S. baby name data in 1957:

  • 1962: unlisted
  • 1961: 9 baby girls named Sakeena
  • 1960: unlisted
  • 1959: unlisted
  • 1958: unlisted
  • 1957: 8 baby girls named Sakeena [debut]
  • 1956: unlisted

Where does it come from? I’ve traced it to jazz drummer/bandleader Arthur “Art” Blakey. He and his second wife, Diana, welcomed a baby girl named Sakeena in early 1957. The same year, Art Blakey and his band The Jazz Messengers put out at least two songs with the name Sakeena in the title:

  • “Sakeena” on the album Cu-Bop (1957), and
  • “Sweet Sakeena” on the album Hard Drive (1957).

The news of baby Sakeena’s birth didn’t seem to garner any attention, so it was either one or both of these songs that boosted the name Sakeena onto the charts.

It fell back off the charts the next year, but reappeared in 1961, after the release of a third song with Sakeena in the title: “Sakeena’s Vision” on the Art Blakey album The Big Beat (1960). This song was written by saxophonist/composer Wayne Shorter. Here’s what a biography of Shorter said about the genesis of “Sakeena’s Vision”:

Sakeena was an unusual two-year-old who had developed the precocious habit of sizing up visitors like a hanging judge the moment they stepped into the Blakey house. “If they were cool, Sakeena was cool,” Wayne said. “If they weren’t, then she wasn’t either. Art said, ‘Sakeena’s hip to them all,’ and let the child have the run of the house.” The toddler made an impression on Wayne, enough to inspire a composition with a difficult, penetrating melody line.

Do you like the name Sakeena?

P.S. Art had quite a few children in total, but the only other child he had with Diana was a son named Gamal, born in 1959.

Sources:

  • Gourse, Leslie. Art Blakey: Jazz Messenger. New York: Schirmer Trade Books, 2002.
  • Mercer, Michelle. Footprints: The Life and Work of Wayne Shorter. New York: Tarcher/Penguin Books, 2007.