Famous Surnames

Joe DiMaggio via Wikipedia

As I was going through the list of names from 2011 for my post on boys with girl names, I noticed a lot of great "named after famous people" names! Of course, some of these kids could have been named after family members and not the famous people with the same name, or their parents just chose the name because they liked it and didn't know or care about the celebrity, but some can't help but think of the celebrity when hearing the name, so I thought I would take a look at them anyway.

Being a baseball fan, Dimaggio is a name that stuck out to me right away. The Baltimore Orioles are my team, which means I hate severely dislike the New York Yankees, but certain past and present Yankee players are highly respected in my book. Joe DiMaggio is one of them, and Lou Gehrig is another. Pat Neshek, relief pitcher for the Oakland Athletics, and his wife recently suffered the sudden loss of their newborn baby, a boy named Gehrig John. I may be a little biased, but I think baseball players provide some of the best honorary names for babies.

Other famous people (possibly) honored are authors, artists, musicians, models, athletes, designers, philosophers, newscasters, criminals, television and movie celebrities, and politicians (although I did skip President(ial) Names, since I already wrote on them). I also only took into account the names that were spelled exactly like the celebrity.

Here are a list of the names that caught my eye, along with the number of babies born with the name in 2011:

Amadeus 35 (Not his surname, but still very linked to Mozart.)
Aniston 179
Arden 175, 72
Aristotle 23
Armani 516, 377
Austen 147, 28 (Could be a variant of Austin, but I choose to think some of these are after the author Jane, especially the girls.)
Beckham 356, 5
Berra 6
Brando 53
Brinkley 71
Brolin 13
Bronte 13
Browning 9
Cagney 5
Capone 5
Cheney 5 (Do you think this is possibly another spelling for Shanae?  If so, could be a reason to stay away from variant spellings, especially if you wouldn't like people to think your daughter is named after the former VP.)
Chesney 66, 6
Clancy 14, 13
Coltrane 13
Crawford 33
Crockett 8
Crosby 301, 24
Cruise 11
Daly 10
Darwin 291, 5
Dempsey 67, 25
Dillinger 36
Dimaggio 8
Dorsey 5
Fielder 6
Fitzgerald 7
Gable 7
Gabor 5
Garland 21, 6
Garner 12
Gehrig 27
Getty 5
Grisham 6
Guthrie 12
Hanson 39
Harlow 462, 13
Hendrix 200, 14
Hogan 29
Hughes 11
Huston 18
Hutton 16, 6
Iverson 20
Jenner 50
Jeter 37
Jolie 367
Joplin 14
Keaton 802, 57
Kepler 7
Kingsley 196, 33
Kipling 8
Lambert 6
Landry 284, 212
Larson 51
Lennon 302, 112
Lennox 262, 44
Lofton 10
Lovell 17
Macarthur 10
Maguire 21, 5
Malone 7, 5
Manning 22
Marino 16
Mattingly 23, 6
Mays 7, 5
Mccartney 13, 7
Monet 55
Monroe 141, 42 (I am including this due to Marilyn Monroe, not the president, especially since the majority are girls.)
Napoleon 20
Newman 6
Newton 14
Nobel 9
Olivier 77
Olsen 10
Patterson 11
Patton 50, 7
Powell 6
Presley 1384, 123
Ptolemy 6
Reeve 33
Reeves 12
Reiner 5
Rembrandt 5
Reynolds 7, 5
Reznor 14
Ricci 5
Ripken 9
Ritter 11
Robinson 48
Rollins 7
Romano 8
Romney 5
Rooney 43, 6
Rourke 9
Sanders 14
Sandler 5
Shaffer 5
Slater 57
Socrates 7
Spartacus 6
Stiles 11
Stockton 45
Swayze 26, 5
Tennyson 34, 15
Thatcher 164
Theron 87
Thurman 10
Tierney 89
Tyson 1370, 5
Wagner 5
Whitaker 18
Whitman 24
Wilder 62
Wyland 11
Zeppelin 20

Other baseball notables: Catcher 11; Dodger 7; Fenway 5; Shea 171, 148; Wrigley 25, 14; Yogi, 7. And I wouldn't be a loyal Orioles fan if I didn't mention Camden. Most non-baseball fans wouldn't see a connection, but if your name is Camden and you are from the Baltimore area, you were most likely named after the Oriole Park at Camden Yards.

Which famous surname would you use?