Russell originated from a surname, which derived from the French word russel (and Old Norse ‘rossel’) for ‘red-haired’.
Russell is a first name typically given to boys, but in rare cases also used as a girls name.
The name Russell 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, Russell ranks 385. Recently, out of every 10,000 newborn boys, approximately 4 were named Russell. In the entire USA, approximately 346,566 people – children, adults and seniors – currently bear the name Russell. That is 0.10 % of all living Americans.
Russell originated from a surname, which derived from the French word russel (and Old Norse ‘rossel’) for ‘red-haired’.
In English-speaking countries,.. Russell was a very popular name until the 1970s, since then its use has been in steady decline.
There are only 386 different male names registered in every single state in the U.S., and Russell is one of them. However, Russell is not equally widespread in all states, but people in Montana seem to particularly fancy this name – the 2,029 men called Russell who live here are 0,388% of all male residents and push their name up to #57 in our SmartGenius statistics, easily placing it in the top 100 most common male names in Montana. If you look at all the states in the USA together, you can currently find as many as 346,566 people with the name Russell. Across all regions and age groups, this lands Russell on position 93 in our SmartGenius ranking of the top male names – of course, the current popularity as a baby name for newborns looks somewhat 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 R is quite common as an initial letter for boys’ names. To be precise, 5.2% of all 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 seven letters, the name Russell has a typical length for first names in the US. In fact, 26% of all common first names consist of exactly seven letters. 52% of all first names are shorter, while 22% have eight 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.
Therefore: As 5.2% of all boys' names start with R, this initial letter occurs much more often than all 26 letters on average. And maybe interesting to know: of all the names that begin with an R, Robert is the most common.
If your name is Russell 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 Russell, you can simply say:
Rocket
Unicorn
Sun
Sun
Elephant
Lion
Lion
Braille is made up of dots, which the blind and visually impaired can feel to read words.
Russell
Russell
Just use American Sign Language!
These flags are used for maritime communication - each flag represents a letter.
R
U
S
S
E
L
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.
R
U
S
S
E
L
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. Russell sounds like this:
