How popular is the baby name Will 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 Will.
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Which baby names will become more popular thanks to the events of 2013?
Here are some names that might catch on this year:
Macklemore Macklemore & Ryan Lewis have had a lot of luck with their singles “Thrift Shop” and “Can’t Hold Us” during the first half of 2013.
Cypher & Kitai Cypher Raige & Kitai Raige (played by Will Smith & Jaden Smith) are characters in the movie After Earth, released a week or so ago.
Armie Armand “Armie” Hammer co-stars with Johnny Depp in The Lone Ranger, coming out next month. (He inherited his unusual name from great-grandpa Armand Hammer.)
Tesla & Elon The Tesla Roadster and Tesla Motors co-founder Elon Musk (also known for PayPal & SpaceX) seem to be popping up in the news more and more lately.
Snowden Speaking of names in the news…NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden has been a fixture in the news for a couple of weeks now.
On July 10, 1935, Bert and Irlean Ash of Oklahoma City welcomed twin sons. The boys went without names — they were “designated merely as No. 1 and No. 2” — for more than a month.
Then, on August 15, a plane crash in northern Alaska killed two fellow Oklahomans — Wiley Post and Will Rogers. Post was the pioneering aviator who’d flown solo around the world in 1933 aboard the Winnie Mae, and Rogers was a popular entertainer and social commentator of the day.
Bert and Irlean decided to honor the pair by naming their sons Wiley Rogers Ash and Will Post Ash.
Bert was quoted as saying, “We hope the twins will be able to fly sometime.”
P.S. William Penn Adair “Will” Rogers, who was part Cherokee, was named after Cherokee leader William Penn Adair.
Update, July 2023: I recently stumbled upon another set of twins named after Post and Rogers!
Will Rogers Wallace and Wiley Post Wallace were born in Kenbridge, Virginia, on January 12, 1936.
[Their mother] had decided that if her 12th child was a boy, she’d name him Will Rogers Wallace after American humorist Will Rogers, who had died in a plane crash in August 1935 in Alaska.
But when the doctor announced that she was in labor with twins…she accepted his advice to name the younger boy after Rogers’ pilot, Wiley Post, who also died in the crash.
This second set of twins inspired me to check the U.S. data on both names. Turns out that both Wiley and Will saw an uptick in usage in 1935 specifically:
Boys named Wiley
Boys named Will
1937
222 [rank: 364th]
230 [rank: 355th]
1936
257 [rank: 341st]
234 [rank: 353rd]
1935
286 [rank: 324th]
305 [rank: 311th]
1934
224 [rank: 366th]
215 [rank: 370th]
1933
216 [rank: 369th]
224 [rank: 362nd]
Which of the two names do you prefer?
Sources:
“Twins Named to Honor Dead Pair.” Ellensburg Daily Record 20 Aug. 1935: 6.
On August 9, Gavin and Carrie Jones of Duncanville, Texas, welcomed a set of quints — three boys and two girls:
Will Edward
David Stephen
Marcie Jane
Seth Jared
Grace Elise
Let’s play a game. You’re given a chance to change one of the above names (first + middle combo). Which one do you change, and what do you replace it with?
Please note that I did include names in the gray area between one syllable and two syllables. The deciding factor on these particular names (such as Charles, Miles, and Noel) will be your own interpretation/accent, so be sure to test the names out loud before making any final decisions.
Many of these names also happen to be unisex, so they appear on the one-syllable girl names list as well.
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