Elmer is a male first name. In very rare cases it is also used for girls.
Elmer is a well-known name in the US, but is still special. It is currently only given to every ten thousandth boy, and therefore ranks at 1101 in the SmartGenius statistics. This means there are 1,100 boys names that are more common, but also tens of thousands that are much rarer. In the entire USA, approximately 108,618 people – children, adults and seniors – currently bear the name Elmer. That is 0.03 % of all living Americans.
Appearing throughout the time in the United States, the name Elmer is a staple in the country: Boys have been given the name Elmer for more than 140 years, according to official U.S. naming statistics. Therefore, Elmer is one of the 442 boys' names, that have been given to newborn sons every year since 1880. Even beyond that, Elmer 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 #31 Elmer has never been more popular than back in 1893.
In years where the graph has no value, the name Elmer was given less than five times or even none at all in the entire USA.
As many as 167 babies were named Elmer in the USA in 2022, ranking it #1,104 on the list of the most popular boys' names for that year. However, it experienced its lowest point of popularity in 2020, when it was only ranked at #1,209 of all male names in our SmartGenius statistics - back then 137 boys were named Elmer.
The name Elmer 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 Elmer is apparently especially popular in North Dakota. Although the name is not one of the top 100 most popular men’s names here either, one in 429 men in North Dakota is called Elmer. In total, that’s 1,327 people who feel addressed when the name Elmer is shouted loudly across North Dakota and who ensure that their name makes it to #118 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 Elmer as the answer a total of 108,618 times. This places Elmer at #268 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 Elmer 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 Elmer 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 Elmer 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 Elmer, you can simply say:
Elephant
Lion
Mouse
Elephant
Rocket
Braille is made up of dots, which the blind and visually impaired can feel to read words.
Elmer
Elmer
Just use American Sign Language!
These flags are used for maritime communication - each flag represents a letter.
E
L
M
E
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
L
M
E
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. Elmer sounds like this:
