Arthur
- Pronunciation
- [Ar-thur]
- Gender
- Male
- Meaning
- Noble: Courageous. Legendary Sixth Century King Arthur Of Britain And His Round Table Of Knights.
- Origin
- Arthurian
About the Name Arthur
Arthur descends from the medieval Latin Arthurus, of disputed pre-Roman origin. The most credible scholarly trace runs through the Welsh Arto-rīg-ios or arthos meaning "bear" — yielding "bear-king" or "like a bear." The name's overwhelming literary anchor is King Arthur, the legendary 5th-6th century Briton who, according to medieval Welsh and Latin chronicles, led the British defense against Anglo-Saxon invaders. The historical Arthur is so heavily mythologized through Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae (c. 1136), Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte d'Arthur (1485), and countless subsequent retellings that scholars cannot determine whether a real Arthur existed.
The Arthurian legend — Camelot, the Round Table, the search for the Holy Grail, Lancelot and Guinevere, Merlin and Excalibur — became one of the foundational narrative cycles of medieval European literature. Notable later bearers include American writer Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930, creator of Sherlock Holmes), British playwright Arthur Miller (Death of a Salesman), American science-fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke (2001: A Space Odyssey), and contemporary basketball player Arthur Hill.
Arthur held a US top-15 boys' rank from 1880 through 1929 — five decades of top-tier American popularity. After a long quiet period, the name has been climbing back through the 2010s and 2020s as part of the broader vintage-revival wave alongside Theodore and Henry. The name's appeal is its layered medieval-Arthurian register combined with two flowing syllables that read as both classical and contemporary. Common nicknames Art, Artie, Artur, and the rare Atty each carry distinct registers; international forms include Artur (Polish/Russian), Arturo (Spanish/Italian), Arthur (French/German, identical), and the original Welsh Arthwr.
Source: U.S. Social Security Administration name data, 1880–2024 (methodology). By Marvin Tang.
Quick Facts About Arthur
US Popularity History (1880–2025)
Annual US births named Arthur by gender, from US Social Security Administration records. Peak year: 1921 with 10,527 boys named Arthur (boy rank #19 that year).
Where it stands today: in 2025, ranked #87 for boys (3,847 US births). That's 68 places below its 1921 peak.
Source: US Social Security Administration. Limitations: US birth-certificate data only; names appearing fewer than 5 times in a given year are suppressed for privacy; spelling variants are counted separately. For names that ranked outside the US top 100 before year 2000, only the years they reached the top 100 are shown — the chart may have gaps for less-popular historical names.
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Where in the US Is Arthur Most Popular?
Average boy-name rank within each state across 2016–2025 SSA records. A lower number means the name appears closer to the top of that state's boys-name rankings — a per-capita measure that isn't biased toward large states. For Arthur the strongest states are District of Columbia, Vermont, Massachusetts.
Strongest boys-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | District of Columbia | #77 | 145 |
| 2 | Vermont | #82 | 45 |
| 3 | Massachusetts | #87 | 762 |
| 4 | Montana | #90 | 98 |
| 5 | Minnesota | #95 | 651 |
| 6 | Alaska | #100 | 70 |
| 7 | South Dakota | #112 | 79 |
| 8 | New Hampshire | #113 | 114 |
| 9 | Washington | #114 | 746 |
| 10 | Oregon | #117 | 376 |
Weakest boys-name states
| # | State | Avg rank | Births |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Mississippi | #340 | 81 |
| 2 | Alabama | #283 | 194 |
| 3 | Louisiana | #278 | 200 |
| 4 | Texas | #263 | 1,490 |
| 5 | West Virginia | #256 | 62 |
| 6 | Georgia | #242 | 504 |
| 7 | Arizona | #233 | 358 |
| 8 | Oklahoma | #230 | 248 |
| 9 | New Mexico | #227 | 95 |
| 10 | Tennessee | #226 | 396 |
Source: SSA state-level baby-name dataset 2016–2025. States with fewer than 3 years of data for Arthur in this window are excluded. Births < 5 in a given state-year are suppressed by SSA for privacy.
Variant Forms
Famous People Named Arthur
11 notable figures from history and culture who share the name Arthur.
- Arthur Ashe — Tennis Player (1943)
- Arthur Balfour was a former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom.
- Arthur Cayley was a well-known mathematician.
- Arthur Compton was a renowned American physicist who discovered the Compton Effect.
- Arthur Koestler was a Hungarian-British author and journalist best known for his book ‘Darkness at Noon.
- Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. was an influential historian and writer.
- Arthur Miller — Playwright (1915)
- Arthur Rimbaud — Poet (1854)
- Arthur Schopenhauer was a great German philosopher of the late 19th century, famous for his pessimistic philosophies.
- Arthur Sullivan was a great English composer who was regarded as the greatest young talent in England.
- Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington was one of the most legendary political and military personalities.
Looking for names like Arthur?
A dedicated page with 60+ related names — spelling variants, rhymes, alliterations, same-origin matches, and shared meaning concepts — lives at its own URL so each kind of similarity gets a deeper treatment than fits here.
Compare Arthur to Other Popular Names
Side-by-side popularity charts and crossover years for Arthur against today's most popular boys-name peers (top 8 by US births in the last 10 years of SSA records).
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