The Hebrew name Cain means ‘acquired’. Because of its biblical story, Cain was never a popular name. In the Old Testament, Cain, the firstborn son of Adam and Eve, became the first murderer in human history.
Cain is a male first name.
The name Cain isn’t among the current fashionable names in our top 10 stats, but nonetheless, it’s still very popular and common. In our SmartGenius ranking of all boys names, Cain ranks 756. Recently, out of every 10,000 newborn boys, approximately 2 were named Cain. If you polled the whole US population – children, adults and seniors – you’d find less than one in 10,000 to be named Cain.
The Hebrew name Cain means ‘acquired’. Because of its biblical story, Cain was never a popular name. In the Old Testament, Cain, the firstborn son of Adam and Eve, became the first murderer in human history.
Cain has long been known... as a first name in the US but only gained more attention since the 2000s.
You may not know anyone named Cain, but there’s a good chance you live in the same state as someone with that name. In fact, 37 states are home to men and boys named Cain. (To be fair, a given name is only included in a state’s official statistics if there are at least five people with that name living in that state – so it’s entirely possible that there are still a few men and boys named Cain living in one state or another. If your name is Cain and you live outside of the states highlighted on the map, please let us know so we can refine our statistics even further). And while the first name is present in many states, it is still not one of the popular ones. In Arizona, which has the most people named Cain relative to the population, you still have to ask 12,503 men and boys their names before you hear Cain as an answer just once.
Well, you might say, you probably figured that out yourself! But what you might not know is: The letter C is a frequent initial letter for boys’ names. This is because 5.2% of all common boys’ names in the US begin with this letter. The most common first letters of boys' names, by the way, are J, A and D.
With four letters, the name Cain is shorter than most other given names. In fact, only 5.5% of all common first names in the US consist of exactly four letters. Just 1.2% of all first names are even shorter, while 93% consist of more than four letters. On average, first names in the US (not counting hyphenated names) are 6.5 letters long. There are no significant differences between boys' and girls' names.
With 5.2% of all boys' names that begin with a C, this first letter is thus much more common than the average of all letters. And which boys’ name beginning with C do you think is the most common in the US? The answer is... Charles.
If your name is Cain 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 Cain, you can simply say:
Cat
Apple
Igloo
Nut
Braille is made up of dots, which the blind and visually impaired can feel to read words.
Cain
Cain
Just use American Sign Language!
These flags are used for maritime communication - each flag represents a letter.
C
A
I
N
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.
C
A
I
N
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. Cain sounds like this:
