# Was the name Sherlock common/uncommon in 19th century? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [July 6, 2012, 12:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-name-sherlock-common-uncommon-in-19th-century/627373 "2012-07-06T00:56:56Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Smithy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a4c791/32.png) [@Smithy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smithy)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2012, 12:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-name-sherlock-common-uncommon-in-19th-century/627373/1 "2012-07-06T00:56:56Z")
Hi! These days the name “Sherlock” automatically means Sherlock Holmes, but back when Doyle wrote the stories, was it a common or uncommon name? I don’t recall seeing it for minor characters anywhere else. (I tried googling for the answer but that has way too many hits about the tv shows and movies!) ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2012, 1:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-name-sherlock-common-uncommon-in-19th-century/627373/2 "2012-07-06T01:00:57Z")
ISTR that it was relatively uncommon at the time, but Conan Doyle didn’t coin it. Holmes’s first name was “Sherrinford” in a first draft. ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2012, 1:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-name-sherlock-common-uncommon-in-19th-century/627373/3 "2012-07-06T01:02:01Z")
I’d say uncommon. The Baby Name Voyager says it never ranked among the top 1000 in any time period, going back to 1880. That’s in the US, of course, but I doubt it was any more common in the UK. Google’s [NGram viewer](http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=sherlock&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=0&smoothing=3) shows no hits before the mid-1880s, when the character was created. The name may have existed, but it was far from common. ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2012, 1:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-name-sherlock-common-uncommon-in-19th-century/627373/4 "2012-07-06T01:03:38Z")
> [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](#): > > ISTR that it was relatively uncommon at the time, but Conan Doyle didn’t coin it. Holmes’s first name was “Sherrinford” in a first draft. Second draft? “Wendy”. ---
**Author:** ![Gagundathar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a183cd/32.png) [@Gagundathar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gagundathar)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2012, 1:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-name-sherlock-common-uncommon-in-19th-century/627373/5 "2012-07-06T01:07:30Z")
:dubious: Wendy? Surely you jest. Oh, wait. Now I remember. My mistake. Carry on. … How common was ‘Mycroft’ as a name? I always assumed that both Sherlock and Mycroft were family surnames carried on through the mother’s lines. Now, I am not so sure. Wendy? Harrumph! ---
**Author:** ![BMalion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e274bd/32.png) [@BMalion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BMalion)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2012, 1:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-name-sherlock-common-uncommon-in-19th-century/627373/6 "2012-07-06T01:13:19Z")
Good question! ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2012, 1:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-name-sherlock-common-uncommon-in-19th-century/627373/7 "2012-07-06T01:43:34Z")
According to Google, [Mycroft](http://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=mycroft&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=0&smoothing=3) shows up with some popularity about a decade before the first Sherlock Holmes story. It fades out but revives with Mycroft Holmes’s first appearance in 1893. The earlier instances all seem to be last names. ---
**Author:** ![samclem](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a9a28c/32.png) [@samclem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/samclem)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2012, 2:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-name-sherlock-common-uncommon-in-19th-century/627373/8 "2012-07-06T02:17:18Z")
There are people in the US census at least as early as 1840 whose first name is “sherlock.” Common? Not. People in the US who were born in Ireland as early as 1790 whose last name was sherlock(e) ---
**Author:** ![samclem](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a9a28c/32.png) [@samclem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/samclem)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2012, 2:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-name-sherlock-common-uncommon-in-19th-century/627373/9 "2012-07-06T02:17:50Z")
No early hits for “no shit, sherlock.” Just saying… ---
**Author:** ![Namkcalb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/c89c15/32.png) [@Namkcalb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Namkcalb)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2012, 11:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-name-sherlock-common-uncommon-in-19th-century/627373/10 "2012-07-06T11:20:49Z")
There was a Sh **y** lock in Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice. ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2012, 11:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-name-sherlock-common-uncommon-in-19th-century/627373/11 "2012-07-06T11:58:24Z")
It appears to come from [Ireland, as a surname](http://www.accessgenealogy.com/search/gdxsearch.php?firstname=&ssearchtype=regular&fsearchtype=regular&offset=50&page=1&surname=Sherlock), although I did find a ["Sherlock Todd](http://www.accessgenealogy.com/scripts/data/database.cgi?file=Data&report=SingleArticle&ArticleID=0007435), born in 1796. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2012, 1:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-name-sherlock-common-uncommon-in-19th-century/627373/12 "2012-07-06T13:41:32Z")
William S. Baring-Gould’s _Annotated Sherlock Holmes_ has this to say: > [@](#): > > The name Sherlock … comes from the Irish \*scorlóz \*- Shearlock or Sherloch, which is derived from \*searlóz \*- Scurloch, Shirloch, or Sherloch, which is in turn the Gaelic version of the Anglo-Saxon _scortlog_, literally “short-lock,” that is, one with shorn locks. [The Sherlock family] had settled in Ireland before the beginning of the thirteenth century, and soon became very widespread… > > Sherlockian scholars, on the other hand, have speculated that Holmes was perhaps named for the famous Bishop Thomas Sherlock, 1678-1761, or his father, William Sherlock, 1641-1707, who became Dean of St. Paul’s and the author of _A Practical Discourse Concerning Death_. You might think that _A Practical Discourse Concerning Death_ would be the primest book of all to a Holmes. ---
**Author:** ![astorian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ad7895/32.png) [@astorian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astorian)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2012, 2:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-name-sherlock-common-uncommon-in-19th-century/627373/13 "2012-07-06T14:35:38Z")
There’s a lot of disagreement, but the most common explanation is that Arthur Conan Doyle sometimes played cricket with someone named Sherlock, and that he was an admirer of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes. Sherlock wasn’t a very common name even then. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2012, 2:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-name-sherlock-common-uncommon-in-19th-century/627373/14 "2012-07-06T14:44:22Z")
Agatha Christie (in, I think, _The Labours of Hercules_) makes a point about the odd names of detectives, and imagines Sherlock (and Mycroft’s) mother talking with Hercule’s mother. Obviously, Agatha Christie, writing in the 1940s, didn’t think it was a common name. (For that matter, how many Neros do you know? ) I suspect that Doyle wanted a distinctive name (I heard the same thing **Elendi;l’s Heir** did – Shereringford would be a bit odd, too). Incidentally, the idea of using surnames as first names directly isn’t unheard of (it’s how Cotton Mather got his distinctive first name), but it’s been pointed out that another way for surnames to migrate to first named is for someone to name a child with the full name of an admired individual as their first and middle names (for example, _Martin Luther_ King), and when the first name gets dropped in favor of the middle name, that name gets a new status as a “first” name. I doubt if “Luther” got is first name status this way, bjut I could see it happening for other names. ---
**Author:** ![digs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/digs/32/14889_2.png) [@digs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/digs)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2012, 5:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-name-sherlock-common-uncommon-in-19th-century/627373/15 "2012-07-06T17:09:51Z")
Waiting patiently for someone here to write _The Adventures of Wendy Holmes_… ---
**Author:** ![kaylasdad99](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kaylasdad99/32/3398_2.png) [@kaylasdad99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kaylasdad99)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2012, 6:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-name-sherlock-common-uncommon-in-19th-century/627373/16 "2012-07-06T18:14:43Z")
Sounds like maybe it should be Mary Sue Holmes… ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2012, 6:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-name-sherlock-common-uncommon-in-19th-century/627373/17 "2012-07-06T18:46:42Z")
“Sherlock” means “clear lake”…or “shorn locks”…or “bright hair”…or “fair haired”…or I don’t think anyone has done the necessary research on the name yet. ---
**Author:** ![Smithy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a4c791/32.png) [@Smithy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smithy)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2012, 7:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-name-sherlock-common-uncommon-in-19th-century/627373/18 "2012-07-06T19:13:44Z")
Thanks to everyone who answered! And for adding in Mycroft! I wondered about him too. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![panamajack](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/47e85d/32.png) [@panamajack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/panamajack)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2012, 7:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-name-sherlock-common-uncommon-in-19th-century/627373/19 "2012-07-06T19:31:20Z")
> [@astorian](#): > > There’s a lot of disagreement, but the most common explanation is that Arthur Conan Doyle sometimes played cricket with someone named Sherlock, and that he was an admirer of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes. > > Sherlock wasn’t a very common name even then. Justice Holmes? It seems more likely that he would admire the elder Holmes (Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.) who was a doctor, like Doyle, and not the guy who was on the Massachusetts Supreme Court. ---
**Author:** ![teela\_brown](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/d9b06d/32.png) [@teela\_brown](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/teela_brown)\ **Post date:** [July 6, 2012, 11:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-name-sherlock-common-uncommon-in-19th-century/627373/20 "2012-07-06T23:41:45Z")
The Sherlock stories have some other characters with strange first names, too. Off the top of my head, there’s “Cadogan”, “Enoch”, “Hosmer”, and “Jabez”. I’ll look through my book and come up with some others, I’m sure. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-the-name-sherlock-common-uncommon-in-19th-century/627373.md?page=2)