Nameberry of the Day: Bram
April 20
April 20 marks the death of Abraham ‘Bram’ Stoker, an Irish author, best remembered for his Gothic novel, Dracula.
In his own lifetime, Bram Stoker was better known as an actor’s assistant and the business manager of a West End Theatre, and as an avid traveler, who collected ideas for his fiction along the way.
Published in 1897, Dracula is an epistolary novel, in which a group of characters come together to locate and destroy the eponymous vampiric Count. It is a well-loved classic that has become deeply rooted in the cultural imagination.
The name Bram is an English and Dutch diminutive of Abraham, meaning ‘father of many’. A significant name within Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, Abraham, along with its variants, is popular around the world, and has never left the US Top 1000.
The short and distinctive Bram has not shared the same level of global popularity, but it has been celebrated in the Netherlands, remaining in the Top 20 for over a decade now.
With the rise of one syllable favorites like Kai, Beau, and Finn, Bram could be one to watch out for – especially considering the renewed interest in Stoker’s Dracula, thanks to the Dracula Daily project.
In May each year, readers can now sign up to experience the novel in real time, with portions of the text dropping into their inbox each day, to correspond with the date it happened in the novel. This has led to more people discussing, enjoying, and making memes from the text, and so perhaps we might just be seeing a few more Brams in our midst?
In case you missed these Nameberries of the Day:
Nameberry of the Day: Rosalind
British scientist Rosalind Elsie Franklin passed away on April 16, 1958 at the young age of 37. Rosalind’s work in chemistry and molecular biology was critical to our understanding of the structures of DNA, viruses, coal, and graphite. However, like many
Nameberry of the Day: Darwin
Naturalist and biologist Charles Robert Darwin died on April 19, 1882 at the age of 73. Widely remembered for his contributions to evolutionary biology, Darwin’s theories of natural selection and descending from a common ancestor were revolutionary in the world’s understanding of today’s living beings.