I recently discovered that the name [name_f]Beverly[/name_f]— which always sounded so modern to me— was more popular in the mid-1900s than it is today. The first time I saw [name_f]Beverly[/name_f] used in that time period, I thought how out of place it seemed. [name_m]Little[/name_m] did I know, it wasn’t uncommon! Same goes for [name_f]Pamela[/name_f].
Have you ever learned something about a name that surprised you in any way? It could be a good surprise, a bad surprise, or just something you found interesting.
I don’t know if this counts, but once, I did one of those silly name combining things where it take _ letters from your name, _ from your mom’s name, and _ from your dad’s name and you get the perfect name
The name I got was [name_f]Eulalia[/name_f]. I was like wait that’s actually really pretty and sounds like I could be a name. So I looked it up and came to find it was a name! It’s most notably a catholic saint name which I also found sort of neat since I grew up catholic and one of the things we had to do to get “confirmed” was pick a saint name for ourselves (mine was [name_f]Cecilia[/name_f] which I still love)
[name_m]Austin[/name_m] has always been in the top 1000, and it’s only a little more popular now than it was in 1881.
That really surprised me. I thought that was a modern trendy name from my generation. I know so many Austins, and it sounds modern.
I recently found out [name_m]Ewan[/name_m] and [name_m]Evan[/name_m] aren’t related, in fact [name_m]Ewan[/name_m] has nothing to do with John-variants
In the US, the name [name_f]Aaliyah[/name_f] went from being used a handful of times each year before 1993, to jumping straight into the Top 200s when [name_f]Aaliyah[/name_f] released her debut album. After her death, it moved into the top 100 where it’s stayed ever since
[name_f]Chava[/name_f] has been my favorite name since I was a kid, and I’ve always liked the name [name_f]Eve[/name_f], but I was so shocked to find out they were basically different forms of the same name!! They feel so different to me.
I can never quite get over [name_f]Jane[/name_f] being below the top 1000 where I live (UK). I know it’s not as popular as it once was, but I’ve always seen it as a classic that always appears somewhere in the top 500 at least.
Names can carry fascinating histories and meanings. One surprising thing I learned about a name was discovering that the name “Jessica” was actually coined by William Shakespeare in his play “The Merchant of Venice.” It’s intriguing how a name created centuries ago for a character in literature has become so popular in modern times.
Neither Susan nor any of its variants are in the top 1000.
I was also quite surprised when I first found out that Miriam and Mary are essentially the same name. Same with Joshua and Jesus. With both of these, they each have strong biblical associations with multiple variations of the name (Miriam and Joshua in the OT, Mary and Jesus in the NT).
Also, Imogen was invented by Shakespeare, though it is believed it was intended to be Innogen, but the “nn” was read as “m”.
