The name Edgar derived from the Old English elements ‘ead’ for ‘wealth, fortune’ and ‘gar’ for ‘spear’.
Edgar is a male first name. In very rare cases it is also used for girls.
The name Edgar 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, Edgar ranks 328. Recently, out of every 10,000 newborn boys, approximately 6 were named Edgar. In the entire USA, approximately 142,386 people – children, adults and seniors – currently bear the name Edgar. That is 0.04 % of all living Americans.
The name Edgar derived from the Old English elements ‘ead’ for ‘wealth, fortune’ and ‘gar’ for ‘spear’.
Edgar is known since... at least the 10th century. After that, it was rarely used until a revival in the 18th century.
Appearing throughout the time in the United States, the name Edgar is a staple in the country: Boys have been given the name Edgar for more than 140 years, according to official U.S. naming statistics. Therefore, Edgar is one of the 442 boys' names, that have been given to newborn sons every year since 1880. Even beyond that, Edgar is a very special name that peaked in popularity over 100 years ago in the 19th century, ranking in the top 100 boys' names in our SmartGenius first name statistics: Placed at #48 Edgar has never been more popular than back in 1881.
In years where the graph has no value, the name Edgar was given less than five times or even none at all in the entire USA.
The name Edgar may not be in the top rankings of the most popular boys’ names, but it is one of the few male given names, along with only 385 others, that can be found in every single state in the U.S. from Alaska to Florida and from California to New York. Of course, the name occurs more frequently in some states than in others – and Edgar is apparently especially popular in California. Although the name is not one of the top 100 most popular men’s names here either, one in 551 men in California is called Edgar. In total, that’s 29,663 people who feel addressed when the name Edgar is shouted loudly across California and who ensure that their name makes it to #124 in our SmartGenius ranking of the most common male names in this nice state. If you asked all people in the entire U.S. for their first name, you would hear Edgar as the answer a total of 142,386 times. This places Edgar at #220 in our SmartGenius statistics for the most popular male names in the whole of the USA. This is true for all currently living people across all states and age groups – the recent popularity of the name Edgar as a baby name is, of course, a bit different, as you can see from the statistics above.
Well, you might say, you probably figured that out yourself! But what you might not know is: The letter E is neither particularly common nor particularly rare as a first letter for boys' names: 3.8% 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, while X, U and Q are the least common initials of boys' names.
With five letters, the name Edgar is comparatively short. In fact, 17.0% of all common first names in the US consist of exactly five letters. Only 7% of all first names are even shorter, while 75% have more than five 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.
That means that with 3.8%, E as the first letter in boys' names is almost as common as all 26 letters on average - and of all the boys' names that start with an E, Edward is the most common.
If your name is Edgar 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 Edgar, you can simply say:
Elephant
Dinosaur
Goat
Apple
Rocket
Braille is made up of dots, which the blind and visually impaired can feel to read words.
Edgar
Edgar
Just use American Sign Language!
These flags are used for maritime communication - each flag represents a letter.
E
D
G
A
R
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.
E
D
G
A
R
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. Edgar sounds like this:
