Voltaire
Meaning
“Of disputed origin, perhaps an anagram of Arouet le jeune; famously borne by Voltaire, taken by Francois-Marie Arouet after eleven months in the Bastille.”
Popularity, 1890–2024
Shape drawn from US Social Security baby-name records. Voltaire has stayed rare in US records the whole time: no peak decade to name.
See popularity in Brazil
Popularity in Brazil
116 people · the #37,144 first name in Brazil · about 1 in 1,000,000 · median age 58
Among people named Voltaire living in Brazil at the 2022 census, more were born in the 1950s than in any other decade.
Source: IBGE, Censo Demográfico 2022
The Voltaire deep dive
Whether you’re naming a baby or exploring your own name’s history, this is a personal letter, not a list: where Voltaire 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 Voltaire fits with your family’s names and surname.
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