Message: "Kerwin" - Behind the Name

[Facts] Kerwin

by lizagirl

6/21/2010, 12:08 PM

Does anyone know anything about the name "Kerwin"? It is a masculine name that hasn't been in the top 1,000 American boy names since 1963. For perspective, this site's baby naming data states that "Mary" and "Deborah" were apparently more popular boys' names than "Kerwin". Anyways, it's my father's name. He always claimed that his mother found it in a cheap romance novel, and the meaning he was given (from who, I don't know) was "little jet black one". The most similar name I can find on this site is "Coerwyn" (I don't think I spelled that right). Does anyone else know something about this odd name?

#Kerwin

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- Speranza +2

6/21/2010, 2:52 PM

Kirwin is an Irish surname that means dark skinned.It should be a from of that.

Or it could be a mash-up of Carwyn and Ciaran/Kieran. Ciar means black.

- lizagirl +1

6/24/2010, 7:52 PM

Thanks!

I've heard about the Irish using "Kirwan" as a surname, actually...It's funny, because my Dad (Kerwin) went to Ireland once, and for the first time in his life, he was in a place where people didn't think his name was strange.

I wonder why it was on the charts--albeit at the very bottom--for such a short time, and how it appeared and disappeared so suddenly.

- Norah Namenerd

7/5/2010, 6:37 PM

It's possible that the chart you looked at only ranked names with a certain number of 'hits' or babies born with that name. For example, if the cut-off was 50, then the previous years there could have been 49 babies given that name... that would mean only a +1 or -1 drop, but it would be enough to make it drop off the chart. It could have had more or less the same (albeit low) popularity for years, but we'd never know!

- Speranza

6/21/2010, 2:52 PM

Duplicate - sorry

This message was edited 6/22/2010, 6:25 AM

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