Ernest

Where Ernest comes from

Borrowed in the 18th century from Ernst, a medieval royal name in Germany, from Old High German ernust (“vigor, strife”), only remotely related to modern German ernst or English earnest.
— Wiktionary's entry for Ernest
  • Germanic
  • 2 syllables
Along the way
  1. 1871
    Ernest Rutherford born
    New Zealand physicist
  2. 1880
    First SSA year
    Already #26 among boys — 615 babies in the first year on record.
  3. 1885
    Peak, #21
    718 babies named Ernest — more than any year before or since.
  4. 1899
    Ernest Hemingway born
    American author and journalist
  5. 2001
    The fade
    The first year with half the peak's births — down to #576.
In the dictionary
  • A male given name from the Germanic languages; popular in the 19th century.
Namesakes
  • Ernest Hemingway · American author and journalist, 1899–1961
  • Ernest Rutherford · New Zealand physicist, 1871–1937
  • Ernest Lawrence · American nuclear physicist, 1901–1958
  • Ernest Renan · French philosopher and writer, 1823–1892
  • Ernest Walton · Irish physicist and Nobel laureate, 1903–1995

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.