Linus is a first name for boys.
Linus 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 1204 in the SmartGenius statistics. This means there are 1,203 boys names that are more common, but also tens of thousands that are much rarer. If you polled the whole US population – children, adults and seniors – you’d find less than one in 10,000 to be named Linus.
Linus is not an overly common name, in fact in some of the last 143 years it has been given so infrequently that it doesn't even show up in our statistics (here a name is only recorded in those years in which it was given to newborns at least five times). This was, for example, most recently the case in 1908, where the name Linus was given at most four times in the entire USA, perhaps even less or not even once. (If you are Linus and were born in the USA in 1908, please get in touch with us!) Before that, however, there was a time when the name was significantly more popular - way back in the 19th century, Linus even made it into the top 1,000 of our SmartGenius statistics of the most popular boys' names: In 1884, it ranked on position 555 - a popularity it has never reached again since then.
In years where the graph has no value, the name Linus was given less than five times or even none at all in the entire USA.
Although the name Linus has a changeful history, it has clearly arrived in the present. In 2022, the name was given by young parents to their newborn children a remarkable 125 times and thus landed on position 1,328 in the SmartGenius ranking of the currently most popular male first names. However, the name is still so rare that the 125 boys with the name Linus, who are celebrating their second birthday this year, can rightly feel very special, because it is highly likely that in their kindergarten they will be the only children with this name.
You may not know anyone named Linus, but there’s a good chance you live in the same state as someone with that name. In fact, 27 states are home to men and boys named Linus. (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 Linus living in one state or another. If your name is Linus 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 Minnesota, which has the most people named Linus relative to the population, you still have to ask 17,328 men and boys their names before you hear Linus as an answer just once.
Well, you might say, you probably figured that out yourself! But what you might not know is: The letter L is neither particularly common nor particularly rare as a first letter for boys' names: 4.1% of all common boys' names in the US begin with this letter. By the way, the most common first letters of boys' names are J and A, while X and U are the least common initials of boys' names.
With five letters, the name Linus 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.
Thus, it follows that with 4.1% of all boys' names starting with an L, this initial letter occurs about as often as all 26 letters on average. Nevertheless, there are boys' names with L that are quite common, the most common in the U.S. at present is Larry.
If your name is Linus 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 Linus, you can simply say:
Lion
Igloo
Nut
Unicorn
Sun
Braille is made up of dots, which the blind and visually impaired can feel to read words.
Linus
Linus
Just use American Sign Language!
These flags are used for maritime communication - each flag represents a letter.
L
I
N
U
S
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.
L
I
N
U
S
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. Linus sounds like this:
