Nigels

I am sure I am just one of many people writing about the name Nigel and it’s dramatic decline in popularity. I was at school with Nigels, I worked with Nigels, I taught Nigels, I had best friends who were Nigels, I had friends with children called Nigel… I don’t think I have any relatives called Nigel, and I never had a boyfriend called Nigel, but there have been Nigels a-plenty in my life.  Nigels abound in public life… I looked up a list of them and there were so many! I picked out twenty who I actually knew (not personally of course except for one who I was at school with for a couple of years!) Nigels well-known as sportsmen, politicians, musicians, writers, actors – lots of actors:

• Nigel Benn
• Nigel Bruce
• Nigel Clough
• Nigel Davenport
• Nigel Farage
• Nigel Havers
• Nigel Hawthorne
• Nigel Hess
• Nigel Kennedy
• Nigel Lawson
• Nigel Mansell
• Nigel Nicolson
• Nigel Owens
• Nigel Patrick
• Nigel Pivaro
• Nigel Planer
• Nigel Stock
• Nigel Terry
• Nigel Williams
• Nigel Wrench

… and of course there is the famous steam locomotive, Nigel Gresley, and two novels, Sir Walter Scott’s The Fortunes of Nigel published in 1822, and Conan Doyle’s Sir Nigel , 1905. Looking at birth records since 1840, there is a definite Nigel popularity bulge:

• 1840 – 1
• 1850 – 2
• 1860 – 1
• 1870 – 7
• 1880 – 8
• 1890 – 10
• 1900 – 18
• 1910 – 24
• 1920 – 71
• 1930 – 164
• 1940 – 445
• 1950 – 1943
• 1960 – 4383
• 1963 – 5529
• 1970 – 2469
• 1980 – 413
• 1990 – 125
• 2000 – 25
• 2010 – 18
• 2015 – 9

So what is the origin of the name? I probably derived from the old French Neel, and possibly because of a mistake in transcription became Nigel during the Middle Ages. It was a known name throughout that period, but it only became widely popular as the data above shows, in the 1950’s-1970’s.

In case you are wondering, my featured image is of our friend Nigel!

Here’s a Nigel…