English boy names
English is the only origin on this site whose top-100 entries are mostly other people's job titles. Cooper made barrels, Mason cut stone, Carter drove a cart, Walker trod wool in a vat — all of them surnames first, given names second. Underneath that modern layer sits a much older one: the Old English two-part names, Edward and Alfred and Edgar, that the Norman Conquest very nearly destroyed.
English names in the U.S. top 100
Fourteen of them, and only one — Jack — began life as a first name. The rest are surnames that jumped the fence, which is a specifically American habit and the single biggest force in the current list.
- #15JackJAKEnglish
God is gracious, inherited from John by way of the medieval pet form Jankin. In Britain it has topped the charts for years at a stretch.
- #17HudsonHUD-sunEnglish
Son of Hudde — Hudde being a medieval English pet form of Hugh, not a name in its own right.
- #27CooperKOO-perEnglish
Barrel maker. A skilled trade in a world where everything wet travelled in a cask.
- #36JacksonJAK-sunEnglish
Son of Jack. The surname of a nickname of a name — three layers of English deep.
- #38WyattWY-utEnglish
Brave in war, from Old English Wigheard. One of the rare surname names that was a proper Anglo-Saxon name first.
- #39MasonMAY-sunEnglish
Stoneworker, stonecutter. Borrowed into English from Old French, and one of the trades that built the cathedrals.
- #40BennettBEN-itEnglish
Blessed; the medieval English form of Benedict, worn smooth by centuries of use before it became a surname.
- #45CarterKAR-terEnglish
One who drives a cart. The haulage industry of the Middle Ages, in one word.
- #49MaverickMAV-rikEnglish
Unbranded, independent-minded. From Samuel Maverick, the Texas rancher who left his cattle unmarked and gave English a noun.
- #51GraysonGRAY-sunEnglish
Son of the grieve — the grieve being the steward who ran an estate for its lord.
- #55WestonWESS-tunEnglish
The western farmstead. There are dozens of Westons in England, and every one of them was west of somewhere else.
- #69LincolnLINK-unEnglish
Settlement by the pool, from Celtic lindo and Latin colonia — a Roman colony grafted onto a British word.
- #78WalkerWAW-kerEnglish
A fuller of cloth: the man who trod woollen cloth in a vat to thicken it. Grim work, handsome name.
- #98ArcherAR-churEnglish
Bowman. England's national weapon for two centuries, and now a nursery name.
Traditional English names
The long-serving English given names — some worn down from Latin, some lifted from Norman villages, all of them in use in England for at least four hundred years. The Old English compounds have a section of their own below.
- CharlieCHAR-leeEnglish
Free man. The everyday English form of Charles, and long since a full name rather than a nickname.
- AustinAW-stinEnglish
Venerable, majestic. Augustine, contracted by medieval English speakers who said it far too often.
- JasperJAS-perEnglish
Uncertain; often given as treasurer. In English tradition the name of one of the three magi.
- TobyTOH-beeEnglish
God is good, inherited from Tobias. English enough to have given its name to the Toby jug and to the dog in Punch and Judy.
- GilesJYLZEnglish
Young goat. A hermit saint whose cult was enormous in medieval England — hence all those St Giles parishes.
- PercyPUR-seeEnglish
From the Norman village of Perci. The surname of the earls of Northumberland, borrowed forward as a first name.
- BarnabyBAR-nuh-beeEnglish
Son of encouragement. The English form of Barnabas, and far commoner in Britain than in America.
- ClarkKLARKEnglish
Cleric, scribe — in a village of illiterates, the man who could read. The same root as clergy.
- SpencerSPEN-serEnglish
Keeper of the provisions; the steward of a great household's stores.
- StanleySTAN-leeEnglish
Stony clearing. A place, then a family, then a first name — the standard English sequence.
Old English two-element names
Anglo-Saxon names were built by bolting two meaningful words together, often without much concern for whether the result made sense. The Ead- family is the clearest surviving set: Ead meant wealth or good fortune, and it opens four names still in use. Note how the second elements do the work.
- EdwardED-wardOld English
Ead, wealth, plus weard, guardian. Guardian of prosperity. The one Old English name the Norman kings took up: eight King Edwards have reigned since the Conquest.
- EdmundED-mundOld English
Ead plus mund, protection. Kept alive by Edmund the Martyr, king of East Anglia, killed by a Danish army in 869.
- EdgarED-garOld English
Ead plus gar, spear. Edgar the Peaceful ruled England for sixteen years without a serious war, which was unusual.
- EdwinED-winOld English
Ead plus wine, friend. Edwin of Northumbria was baptised in 627 and canonised after his death in battle six years later.
- AlfredAL-fridOld English
Aelf, elf, plus raed, counsel. Elf-counsel — the elves being a source of wisdom rather than whimsy.
- HaroldHA-ruldOld English
Here, army, plus weald, rule. Commander of the host, and the name of the last Anglo-Saxon king of England.
- WilfredWIL-fredOld English
Will, desire, plus frith, peace. One who wills peace; revived by the Victorians after centuries out of use.
- WilburWIL-burEnglish
Traditionally will, desire, plus burh, fortress — though it reached America as a surname rather than a name.
- WilmerWIL-merEnglish
Will plus maere, famous. Famous will: the same first element, a different boast.
- AveryAY-vuh-reeEnglish
Elf ruler. A worn-down Alfric that survived only as a surname, then came back through the front door.
How English naming works
The Conquest of 1066 did something to the English name stock that no other event has done to a European one: it replaced it. Within two centuries the Old English names that fill the Domesday returns — Leofric, Wulfstan, Godwine, Aelfgar — had all but disappeared from the record, displaced by the Norman imports William, Robert, Richard, Henry and John. By the fourteenth century those five, with Thomas, accounted for the great majority of recorded English men, and the surviving Old English names had survived by attaching themselves to a saint or a king: Edward because of Edward the Confessor, Edmund because of the martyr. Everything in the Ead- section above is a survivor of that near-extinction.
The second engine is the surname, and it explains most of the modern list. English hereditary surnames fixed between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries in four broad types: patronymic (Jackson, Harrison, Wilson), occupational (Cooper, Mason, Walker), locative (Weston, Ashton, Preston) and descriptive nickname (Blake, Reid, Fox). American parents have been feeding all four back in as first names since the nineteenth century, which is why the English slice of the current top 100 reads like a medieval tax roll: a cart-driver, a stonemason, a cloth-fuller and a bowman, all in the same nursery. Scottish and Welsh naming took quite different routes — the other pages under names by origin lay them out.