Irving

Where Irving comes from

Variant of the Scottish habitational surname Irvine, probably from a Celtic word cognate with Welsh ir, yr (“fresh”) + afon (“river”).
— Wiktionary's entry for Irving
  • 2 syllables
Along the way
  1. 1880
    First SSA year
    Already #200 among boys — 60 babies in the first year on record.
  2. 1881
    Irving Langmuir born
    American chemist and physicist
  3. 1888
    Irving Berlin born
    American composer and lyricist
  4. 1911
    Peak, #93
    431 babies named Irving — more than any year before or since.
  5. 1958
    The fade
    The first year with half the peak's births — down to #535.
In the dictionary
  • A male given name transferred from the surname, often used by English-speaking Jews to anglicize Israel.
Namesakes
  • Irving Langmuir · American chemist and physicist, 1881–1957
  • Irving Berlin · American composer and lyricist, 1888–1989
  • Irving Thalberg · American film producer, 1899–1936
  • Irving Fisher · American economist and statistician, 1867–1947
  • Irving Stone · American writer, 1903–1989

Sources: the origin note and dictionary entry are quoted from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 4.0); the namesakes come from Wikidata (CC0); the milestones are worked out from the SSA record.