It’s Derby Day! The Kentucky Derby takes place today, Saturday May 4, in Churchill Downs at about 6:45 pm ET. That means big hats, mint juleps, and — oh right — horse racing.
Derby is a gender-neutral name that is extremely rare: no babies were named Derby in the US for the last year counted, 2022.
(Note: The 2023 name statistics are expected from the Social Security Administration next Friday, May 10, at about 9 am ET. Tune into Nameberry for all the new baby name news.)
Derby is an English surname or place-name meaning “park with deer”. In England, it’s pronounced darby, which confuses it with another gender-neutral name, Darby.
The name Darby is still uncommon but is used more frequently than Derby, given to 68 baby girls and 13 baby boys in the US last year.
Darby is one of those names with very different trajectories for boys and girls, Perhaps inspired by the 1959 film Darby O’Gill and The Little People, which featured a male hero named Darby, Darby ranked on the Top 1000 for boys from 1968-1974. Patrick Dempsey named one of his twin sons Darby.
Darby’s popularity for girls came later, ranking on the female side of the Top 1000 from 1994-2002. Paul Rudd has a daughter named Darby.
In case you missed these Nameberries of the Day:
Nameberry of the Week: Xanthe
Each Sunday, in replacement of the usual Name of the Day newsletter, we will be featuring a Name of the Week chosen by you! The Name of the Week will be selected through the “name of the day” thread over on the forums, where you can share a name you are feeling
Nameberry of the Day: Eldridge
Eldridge Cleaver, who died on this day in 1998, is best known as a leader in the Black Panther Party who wrote the seminal work of black literature Soul on Ice while in prison. It was Cleaver who coined the rallying cry, “You’re either part of the problem or part of the solution.”