Merle

Where Merle comes from

Borrowed from French Merle.
— Wiktionary's entry for Merle
  • English
  • Vowel-ended
Along the way
  1. 1880
    First SSA year
    Already #425 among boys — 17 babies in the first year on record.
  2. 1912
    Mostly boys from here
    Until now more girls than boys got the name; from this year it's the other way round, and has stayed that way.
  3. 1918
    Peak, #170
    795 babies named Merle — more than any year before or since.
  4. 1944
    The fade
    The first year with half the peak's births — down to #305.
In the dictionary
  • A male given name transferred from the surname.
  • A female given name from English.
Namesakes

No widely known Merle turns up in the encyclopedias yet — the name is still all theirs to make famous.

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.