Archibald is a first name for boys.
… it’s a special occasion. That’s because the name Archibald is quite rare in the US. While it’s still a name in use, lately, only approximately 4 out of 100,000 boys have been named Archibald. In the SmartGenius ranking, Archibald is #1,885 on the list of most common boys names. If you polled the whole US population – children, adults and seniors – you’d find less than one in 10,000 to be named Archibald.
Archibald is not an overly common name, in fact in some of the last 143 years it has been given so infrequently that it doesn't even show up in our statistics (here a name is only recorded in those years in which it was given to newborns at least five times). This was, for example, most recently the case in 2000, where the name Archibald was given at most four times in the entire USA, perhaps even less or not even once. (If you are Archibald and were born in the USA in 2000, please get in touch with us!) Before that, however, there was a time when the name was significantly more popular - way back in the 19th century, Archibald even made it into the top 1,000 of our SmartGenius statistics of the most popular boys' names: In 1890, it ranked on position 266 - a popularity it has never reached again since then.
In years where the graph has no value, the name Archibald was given less than five times or even none at all in the entire USA.
Although the name Archibald has a changeful history, it has clearly arrived in the present. In 2022, the name was given by young parents to their newborn children a remarkable 147 times and thus landed on position 1,187 in the SmartGenius ranking of the currently most popular male first names. However, the name is still so rare that the 147 boys with the name Archibald, who are celebrating their second birthday this year, can rightly feel very special, because it is highly likely that in their kindergarten they will be the only children with this name.
The odds of having a man or boy named Archibald in your home state are about the same as the chance for a white Christmas in New York City – in both cases they are less than 30%. More precisely, the first name Archibald is registered in 18 states, among which are Arizona, California, Florida, Illinois or Indiana. In proportion to the male population, most men and boys with the first name Archibald live in New York, but even there the name is rather special – on average, you would have to ask 78,320 men and boys in New York for their name before you meet one who answers with Archibald.
Well, you might say, you probably figured that out yourself! But what you might not know is: The letter A is a very popular first letter for boys’ names. That’s because 9.0% of all common boys’ names in the US begin with this letter. Only the first letter J is more common for boys' names.
With nine letters, the name Archibald is relatively long compared to other names. In fact, 5.6% of all common first names in the US consist of exactly nine letters. 92% of all first names are shorter, while not even 2.5% of all boys’ and girls’ names use ten or more letters. On average, first names in the US (not counting hyphenated names) are 6.5 letters long with no significant differences between boys' and girls' names.
That means that if 9.0% of all boys' names start with an A, this initial letter occurs nearly three times as often as all other letters on average. And by the way: Of all the boys' names that start with an A, Anthony is the most common.
If your name is Archibald and someone asks after your name, you can of course just tell them what it is. But sometimes that isn't so easy - what if it's too loud, and you don't understand them well? Or what if the other person is so far away that you can see them but not hear them? In these situations, you can communicate your name in so many other ways: you call spell it, sign it, or even use a flag to wave it...
So that everyone really understands you when you have to spell the name Archibald, you can simply say:
Apple
Rocket
Cat
Hat
Igloo
Butterfly
Apple
Lion
Dinosaur
Braille is made up of dots, which the blind and visually impaired can feel to read words.
Archibald
Archibald
Just use American Sign Language!
These flags are used for maritime communication - each flag represents a letter.
A
R
C
H
I
B
A
L
D
In the navy, sailors of two ships might wave flags to each other to send messages. A sailor holds two flags in specific positions to represent different letters.
A
R
C
H
I
B
A
L
D
In Morse code, letters and other characters are represented only by a series of short and long tones. For example, a short tone followed by a long tone stands for the letter A. Archibald sounds like this:
