Morgan

Where Morgan comes from

from Old Welsh Morcant, possibly from *mor (“sea”) (Welsh môr) or *mọr (“great”) (Old Welsh maur) + *kantos (“circle”) (Welsh cant), meaning “great chief” or “sea chief”.
— Wiktionary's entry for Morgan
  • Irish
  • 2 syllables
Along the way
  1. 1918
    First appearance
    #4,809 among girls, 5 babies — the first year at least five got the name.
  2. 1937
    Morgan Freeman born
    American actor and producer
  3. 1952
    Morgan Tsvangirai born
    former Prime Minister of Zimbabwe
  4. 1980
    Mostly girls from here
    Until now more boys than girls got the name; from this year it's the other way round, and has stayed that way.
  5. 1997
    Peak, #22
    10,342 babies named Morgan — more than any year before or since.
  6. 2009
    The fade
    The first year with half the peak's births — down to #57.
In the dictionary
  • A unisex given name.
  • A male or female given name
  • A male given name from Irish, an adopted anglicization of Murchadh (Murrough).
Namesakes
  • Morgan Freeman · American actor and producer, born 1937
  • Morgan Tsvangirai · former Prime Minister of Zimbabwe, 1952–2018
  • Morgan De Sanctis · Italian association football player, born 1977
  • Morgan Schneiderlin · French footballer, born 1989
  • Morgan Rogers · English association football player, born 2002

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.