Today’s name comes from a familiar formula – take a popular saint, name a few places after the saint’s good deeds, name the residents after the place – and eventually you might end up with a new given name.
Thanks to Sarah Winter for suggesting Sinclair as Name of the Day.
A few days ago, St. John took his turn in the spotlight. Sinclair’s saintly origins are slightly more obscure, and hence the name feels more wearable.
But speaking of the saint, here’s an interesting twist. Many baby name books will faithfully report that the place names - Saint-Clair-sur-Epte, Saint-Clair-sur-Elle and Saint-Clair-l’Évêque – honor Saint Clare of Assisi.
Not so!
While Saint Clare is quite popular today, she didn’t live until the thirteenth century. William Saint-Clair-sur-Epte was among the companions of William the Conqueror in 1066. By the time Saint Clare founded her religious order, this moniker was already on the map.
Instead, all of those places commemorate the life of Saint Clarus. The saint being honored is almost certainly an Englishman who came to Normandy, incurred the wrath of a noblewoman and lost his head, sometime between the seventh and ninth centuries. There’s at least one, and possibly two, more French saints by the same name.
While he’s obscure today, Saint Clarus was quite popular in the Middle Ages.
In any case, de Saint-Clair’s pronunciation in Norman England quickly morphed into sin CLARE and the spelling followed. Synklar, Sainclair and others appear, but Sinclair quickly became the most common.
The family made their mark in Scotland, where Clan Sinclair remains significant. Malcolm Sinclair, 20th Earl of Caithness, is the current Clan Chief, and Sinclairs are scattered throughout Scottish history.
As a given name, Sinclair has never made it to the US Top 1000. But it does have a certain literary panache, thanks to writer Sinclair Lewis, best known for Main Street, Babbitt and Elmer Gantry. In 1930, he became the first American to win the Nobel Prize in Literature. There’s also Upton Sinclair, muckraking journalist best known for his 1906 novel-expose The Jungle.
The name has come full circle. You can find Sinclair on the map in Georgia, Idaho, Minnesota and Wyoming. There’s also the Sinclair Oil Corporation, known for its smiling green dinosaur logo, and responsible for at least some of those place names.
Overall, Sinclair has an appealing sound. He’s nicely obscure but not at all difficult to pronounce.
The trouble with Sinclair? It could he could easily be the next Madison.
After all, the surname trend shows little sign of abating. And the classic Claire is at her most popular ever – she reached #66 in 2007. A few years ago, television’s Veronica Mars even featured a classmate called Madison Sinclair. It’s not much of a leap to imagine parents looking for the next Taylor or Mackenzie might consider this name.
But it hasn’t happened yet. And so Sinclair emerges as a viable choice – familiar without being even a little bit common.
Sinclair doesn’t excite me. I hadn’t thought of it being the next Madison until Verity brought it up and that kind of puts me off even more; I’m just not a bit fan of the gender neutral names… and even though this isn’t there yet, it just adds to my tepid feelings for the name. It’s not that I actively dislike the name, but well, I don’t really like it either. It makes for a nice surname and I’d be just fine with it staying in the final spot.
Oh please, no Sinclair girls! Sinclair strikes a singularly masculine edge and hangs there easily. Why would you want Sin- right at the front of your girls name? Baffling.
I do like Sinclair, he’s pretty snazzy to me. I like that he’s NOT an n ender, yet again. I also like his feel, sharp, crisp and strong. Very nice, indeed. He’s a bit too surnamey for first name use for me but, like Sterling, he may show up the middle! I firmly like Sinclair. He feels current but is quite old and Yeah, he’d be right at home today. That makes a winner, for me and yes, I’m still a sucker for girly sounding boys names… Sinclair fits that as well!
Please, please let Sinclair stay masculine! He’s not my usual style, but I somehow really like him (I like a lot of -r enders) and I could use him to honor both a Clarence and a Clara. I also like the literary associations. He’s actually in my top 10 (usually). Secretly, I know that the surnamey-ness and the possibility of him crossing the gender divide will probably prevent me from ever using Sinclair, at least in the first-name slot, but if I could just slow down those two trains, maybe I could have a son and name him Sinclair before they arrived…
Annelise, I know what you mean about Sinclair. If our second had been a boy, I was wondering how to honor my mother anyhow, possibly by using Sinclair as a middle name. (Though I was leaning towards using Clare in the middle spot – it used to be masculine, after all!) As it happens, this post partly honors my mother – 4/9 is her birthday.
And JNE, I didn’t think about the Madison connection until I started writing this, when it leapt out. I recently discovered that Emerson is, indeed, climbing the charts rapidly and so I’ve been wondering what other surname names might gain in the next few years.
For me, the biggest barrier to Sinclair is the word “sin.” But Lola, I’d say I’m not wild about that fact for either gender.
I like Sinclair a lot! I think it makes a great boys’ middle name because its stress is on the second syllable (like Marie for girls).
The “sin” part doesn’t bug me as much as it does with St. John — again, I think it’s about where the stress falls. We say sin-CLAIR, not SIN-clair, so the “sin” part isn’t quite as strongly highlighted.
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