Calvin
The story
Calvin entered the name pool from an unexpected direction: it is the surname of Jean Cauvin, the French reformer the world knows as John Calvin, and the surname itself is traditionally traced to a word meaning little bald one. Protestant admiration turned it into a first name, and America has kept it in steady rotation ever since: Calvin shows up in every decade of the records, never a craze and never a casualty. There is a small crest in the 1920s, just as Calvin Coolidge occupied the White House; we cannot prove the connection, but the timing is hard to ignore. After holding its middle course for decades, the name has climbed again lately and now sits at its strongest level on record, helped perhaps by the friendly nickname Cal and the afterglow of a certain comic-strip six-year-old and his tiger.
Popularity, 1890–2024
Shape drawn from US Social Security baby-name records. Calvin peaked in the 2010s and the 2020s in nearly equal measure.
See popularity in Brazil
Popularity in Brazil
489 people · the #13,602 first name in Brazil · about 1 in 500,000 · median age 22
Among people named Calvin living in Brazil at the 2022 census, more were born in the 1990s than in any other decade.
The census also counted 36 born between 2020 and August 2022, too recent a span to chart.
Source: IBGE, Censo Demográfico 2022
The Calvin deep dive
Whether you’re naming a baby or exploring your own name’s history, this is a personal letter, not a list: where Calvin truly comes from, how it traveled, and what a century of records reveals. If you have grown a tree on nametree, it also considers how Calvin fits with your family’s names and surname.
Keep exploring
Names like Calvin · Nicknames for Calvin · Middle names for Calvin
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