A Short History of American Given Names
Namekin Team
Editorial
TL;DR
A short history of American given names, tracing four hundred years of naming through Puritan virtue names, Revolutionary classical picks, the great immigration waves from 1850 to 1920, twentieth-century invention, and today's genuinely plural naming culture. The result is the largest and most variable name pool in the English-speaking world.
American given names tell the story of American immigration. Every wave of settlement added a new layer, and because the United States never had a central naming authority, each layer kept some of its distinctiveness. The result is the largest and most variable name pool in the English-speaking world.
The Puritan foundation (1620–1700)
The earliest American name pool was English Puritan: Old Testament names, virtue names, and plain classical names. Increase, Thankful, Submit, Remember, Desire, these are all real early American names. The virtue names faded fast, but the Old Testament names (Ezekiel, Jeremiah, Elijah, Abigail, Rebecca) are still in use 400 years later.
The Revolutionary and early Republic (1776–1830)
The Revolutionary generation leaned heavily into classical republican naming: Cato, Cornelia, Horatio, Lucretia. Many of these were second-generation homages rather than primary names, but the appetite for Greek and Roman names persisted. The president-naming tradition also started here; there are still men named Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe whose names came from this era.
The immigrant waves (1850–1920)
Between 1850 and 1920 the American name pool expanded more than at any other point in its history. Irish immigration brought Patrick, Bridget, Kevin, and Maureen; German immigration brought Klaus, Heinz, Gertrude, and Helga; Italian immigration brought Antonio, Giovanni, Maria, and Rosa; Jewish immigration brought Abraham, Solomon, Sarah, and Rachel. Many of these names were anglicised on arrival (Giovanni became John, Heinrich became Henry) but the original names survived in families.
American naming is the single largest natural experiment in cross-cultural naming in human history.
The 20th-century inventiveness (1920–2000)
American parents started inventing names in earnest in the early 20th century. Shirley was rare before Shirley Temple; it became one of the most common girl names of the 1930s. Linda, Debbie, Jennifer, and Tiffany all followed similar trajectories. African American naming in the 1960s–80s developed a remarkable creative tradition: invented names like Shaquille, LaToya, Jaylen, and Malaysia all emerged from this wave.
The late-20th-century pluralisation
By the 1990s, American names had pluralised so widely that any name was usable. Hindu names (Priya, Arjun), Arabic names (Zayn, Leila), African names (Zuri, Amari), and Slavic names (Mila, Sasha) all entered the mainstream American pool. The old Anglo-Saxon core shrank from dominant to one of many options.
Today
The United States is now the most plural naming market in the world. The top 100 American names include names of English, Hebrew, Arabic, Spanish, Irish, Scandinavian, Japanese, Hindi, and African origins, and parents increasingly feel no constraint to pick from within their own heritage.
See also our companion post on the history of English names, and our lists of biblical boy names and biblical girl names. The defining feature of contemporary American naming is range. A child born in the US today can carry literally any name from any tradition, and the only pressure they will feel is whether the name is easy to say. That freedom is the legacy of a naming culture that has never had a list.
