Hannibal is a first name for boys.
There’s a good chance that a boy named Hannibal in a medium-sized town will be unique. That’s because only a few babies a year are named Hannibal in all of the US. Only about one in 100,000 boys is named Hannibal by his parents. In the ranking of most common boys names in recent years, Hannibal ranks at #5,451. That means there are 5,450 more common boys names, but there are also a few thousand that are even rarer. If you polled the whole US population – children, adults and seniors – you’d find less than one in 10,000 to be named Hannibal.
If you ever wanted to meet a boy or man named Hannibal, you have limited options – because boys with this beautiful name are currently only living in California or New York. However, we must admit that 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 quite possible that there are still a few men and boys called Hannibal living in one state or another. (If your name is Hannibal and you live outside of California and New York, we’d really appreciate it if you’d let us know so we can refine our statistics even further.) Which means – if you put this number in relation to the population of the USA – only one in 1,276,610 boys and men would turn around if you called out the name Hannibal. So if your name is Hannibal, it’s very likely that you won’t need a nickname in your peer group, because having the name Hannibal already makes you quite special.
Well, you might say, you probably figured that out yourself! But what you might not know is: The letter H is not particularly common as a first letter for boys' names: only 2.9% of all common boys' names in the US begin with an H. The most common first letters for boys' names are J and A, while X and U are the least common first letters of boys' names.
With eight letters, the name Hannibal is long compared to other names. In fact, 14.5% of all common first names in the US consist of exactly eight letters. 78% of all first names are shorter, while only 8% of all boys’ and girls’ names use nine letters or even more. 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.
This means that if 2.9% of all boys' names begin with an H, this initial letter is less common than the other letters on average. Nevertheless, there are of course some names that begin with H and are extremely popular, for example Henry, currently the most common boys’ name with H.
If your name is Hannibal 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 Hannibal, you can simply say:
Hat
Apple
Nut
Nut
Igloo
Butterfly
Apple
Lion
Braille is made up of dots, which the blind and visually impaired can feel to read words.
Hannibal
Hannibal
Just use American Sign Language!
These flags are used for maritime communication - each flag represents a letter.
H
A
N
N
I
B
A
L
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.
H
A
N
N
I
B
A
L
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. Hannibal sounds like this:
