The name Callum is a variant of Calum, the Scottish form of Columba. This is a Late Latin name meaning ‘dove’, which became popular with the spread of Christianity as the dove is a symbol of the Holy Spirit.
Callum is a male first name. In very rare cases it is also used for girls.
The name Callum 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, Callum ranks 448. Recently, out of every 10,000 newborn boys, approximately 4 were named Callum. If you polled the whole US population – children, adults and seniors – you’d find less than one in 10,000 to be named Callum.
Callum is a fairly recent phenomenon. In the past, the name wasn't really on the radar of expectant parents. Then, unexpectedly, Callum cried out for attention, reaching its peak in popularity at #244 in our SmartGenius statistics in the year 2022. People over 50 probably didn't have classmates named Callum, for there were many years in which not a single parent chose this first name for their son. Although it also has never been in the top 100 of most popular first names, Callum seems to have been in vogue for a while, especially since the beginning of the new millennium.
In years where the graph has no value, the name Callum was given less than five times or even none at all in the entire USA.
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 six letters, the name Callum is of average length. In fact, 28% of all common first names in the US consist of exactly six letters. 24% of all first names are shorter, while 48% have seven letters or more. 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 Callum 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 Callum, you can simply say:
Cat
Apple
Lion
Lion
Unicorn
Mouse
Braille is made up of dots, which the blind and visually impaired can feel to read words.
Callum
Callum
Just use American Sign Language!
These flags are used for maritime communication - each flag represents a letter.
C
A
L
L
U
M
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
L
L
U
M
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. Callum sounds like this:
