From artists and activists to First Ladies and inventors, there are so many significant Americans who pepper our history books. Whether you're a history buff or just love the good ole US of A, there are a ton of notable people within our country's rich history who are worth honoring when it comes to naming your baby [1] (and who knows, maybe your little babe will make it into the history books one day, too).
Scroll through for 50 bold baby names [2] inspired by American history.
Boys
- Aaron (Burr) — third vice president
- Benjamin (Franklin) — Founding Father, inventor
- Carver (George Washington) — inventor
- Christopher (Columbus) — discovered America
- Clark (William) — explorer
- Eli (Whitney) — inventor
- Edison (Thomas Alva) — inventor
- Emerson (Ralph Waldo) — poet
- Frederick (Douglass) — abolitionist
- George (Washington) — first president
- Grant (Ulysses S.) — 18th president, US general
- Harry (Truman) — 33rd president
- Hawthorne (Nathaniel) — novelist
- Jackson (Pollock) — painter
- Jefferson (Thomas) — Founding Father, third president
- Lewis (Meriwether) — explorer
- Lincoln (Abraham) — 16th president
- Luther (King, Martin) — African-American civil rights activist
- Malcolm (X) — African-American civil rights activist
- Neil (Armstrong) — astronaut, first man on the moon
- Parks (Rosa) — African-American civil rights activist
- Quincy (Adams, John) — sixth President
- Smith (John) — explorer
- Theodore (Roosevelt) —26th President, military leader
- Wright (Orville and Wilbur) — inventors of the first airplane
Girls
- Abigail (Adams) — second First Lady
- Alva (Edison, Thomas) — inventor
- Amelia (Earhart) — first female aviator to fly solo across the Atlantic
- Betsy (Ross) — made the first American flag
- Cady (Stanton, Elizabeth) — suffragist, social activist, abolitionist
- Eleanor (Roosevelt) — longest-serving First Lady, activist
- Elizabeth (Blackwell) — first woman to receive a medical degree in the US
- Frances (Francis Scott Key) — wrote the National Anthem
- Georgia (O'Keefe) — painter
- Harriet (Beecher Stowe) — author of the anti-slavery novel Uncle Tom's Cabin
- Harper (Lee) — author of To Kill a Mockingbird
- Hellen (Keller) — first deaf-blind person to earn a bachelor of arts degree
- Jackie (Robinson) — first African American to play in Major League Baseball
- Jane (Addams) — activist, first American woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize
- Kennedy (John F.) — youngest man to be elected president
- Lucy (Stone) — suffragist
- Madison (James) — fourth president
- Martha (Washington) — first First Lady (though the title was not coined until after her death)
- Morgan (J.P.) — banker
- Reagan (Ronald) — 40th president
- Rosa (Parks) — African-American civil rights activist
- Rosie (the Riveter) — cultural icon representing the women who worked in factories and shipyards during World War II
- Sojourner (Truth) — abolitionist, women's rights activist
- Susan (B. Anthony) — women's rights activist
- Whitney (Eli) — inventor