Think of the Court of King Arthur and the legend of Camelot and you may imagine that the name Arthur is very much of Anglo-Saxon heritage.  In fact, the name is of Celtic origin, and means “noble”.

Popularity of a name often depends on people with whom that name is associated.  In recent decades, celebrity singers and actors like Kylie Minogue, Britney Spears and Jack Black have ensured a rise in the popularity of their first names among the general public.  Religion and tradition play their role, too, in the naming of infants.  Names such as David, Isaac and Mohammed will always remain popular for that reason.

But what about Arthur?  In religious terms there was a Saint Arthur – Saint Arthur of Glastonbury.  You may think that the popularity of the Glastonbury festival could have provoked an association with the name Arthur and thus helped re-spike its popularity as a trendy name.  But there is no evidence of this.

How about celebrities?  Well there is the late Arthur Ashe the tennis player who won the Wimbledon final in 1975, but that would hardly spike popularity in the name these thirty-something years later.  Other famous Arthurs?  The famous Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes, playwright Arthur Miller, possibly better known for his brief marriage to Marilyn Monroe; Arthur C. Clarke, famous writer of Science Fiction or Arthur Askey, late British comedian.

Not a long list – and not at all a recent list – so is the name Arthur really coming back as a trendy name?  And was it ever considered “trendy”?  According to onomastics site behindthename.com, Arthur was the 14th most popular name in the United States between 1880 and 1899, but seems to have gradually lost its popularity with the advent of the 20th Century, until by 2009, it had slipped down the ratings to number 376, only two places higher than it had been three years previously.

In the British top 100 boys’ names, Arthur is nowhere to be seen between Jack (1) and Zak (100).  Can it be then that the concept of Arthur as being a trendy name is a fabrication or just some kind of flight of fancy? 

There is one piece of evidence to show that the name really could be becoming more trendy.  In France the name climbed from 22nd most popular in 2006 to 16th most popular the following year and has shown a massive increase in popularity over the past twenty years, according to French site tous-les-prenoms.com

The name seems also to be increasing in popularity in the Netherlands and in Belgium it was the sixth most popular name as recently as 2006.  Does this mean that France, the Netherlands and Belgium are trendier than the United States and Great Britain?  Or just that they have a better appreciation of tradition and history?  You decide.