Ben
Where Ben comes from
Ben hasn't made it into the dictionaries we draw on, and nobody well known enough for an encyclopedia has carried it yet — so for now its story is the one the SSA record tells. Names that spell a familiar sound a new way often live here for a while before anyone writes them down.
Along the way
- 1572Ben Jonson bornEnglish playwright, poet, and actor
- 1880First SSA yearAlready #58 among boys — 305 babies in the first year on record.
- 1889Peak, #43453 babies named Ben — more than any year before or since.
- 1972Ben Affleck bornAmerican film actor, director and screenwriter
In the dictionary
No dictionary entry for this spelling — which is its own kind of rare.
Namesakes
- Ben Affleck · American film actor, director and screenwriter, born 1972
- Ben Jonson · English playwright, poet, and actor, 1572–1637
- Ben Kingsley · English actor, born 1943
- Ben Roy Mottelson · Danish-American nuclear physicist, 1926–2022
- Ben Foster · English association football player, born 1983
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.