# Why are Sidney, Ira, Irving, such common Jewish names?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-sidney-ira-irving-such-common-jewish-names/570715>\
**Category:** Factual Questions\
**Created:** [February 9, 2011, 12:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-sidney-ira-irving-such-common-jewish-names/570715 "2011-02-09T00:36:37Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 4

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**Author:** ![Ellis\_Aponte\_Jr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@Ellis\_Aponte\_Jr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ellis_Aponte_Jr)\
**Post date:** [February 10, 2011, 5:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-sidney-ira-irving-such-common-jewish-names/570715/61 "2011-02-10T17:03:00Z")

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Actors Paul Reiser and Paul Michael Glaser are Jewish. Reiser’s wife is named Paula.

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**Author:** ![astorian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ad7895/32.png) [@astorian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astorian)\
**Post date:** [February 10, 2011, 5:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-sidney-ira-irving-such-common-jewish-names/570715/62 "2011-02-10T17:15:11Z")

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> [@Argent\_Towers](#):
>
> I think that the name Paul, in general, is rare. But I certainly don’t think it’s rarer among Jews than among Gentiles.

“Gentiles” is a very broad group.

When I was a kid, the schools I went to were about 50% irish and 50% Italian.An Irish kid named Peter or Paul was very rare. Italian kids named Peter and Paul were abundant!

(Yes, “Goodfellas” got that right- remember when , ahem, PAUL Sorvino was introducing Lorraine Bracco to all his dozens of nephews, every one of whom seemed to be named Petie or Paulie?)

In the same way, there very very few Irish Vincents or Anthonies, but LOADS of Italian kids with those names.

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**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\
**Post date:** [February 10, 2011, 5:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-are-sidney-ira-irving-such-common-jewish-names/570715/63 "2011-02-10T17:42:11Z")

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> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#):
>
> This is the explanation I’ve always heard.  
> They’re all in the top 1000 names. So is Irving. However, they were indeed far more popular in the past.
> 
> The Social Security Administration has a [page](http://www.ssa.gov/oact/babynames/) that allows you enter any name for any length of time and see what rank it held over that period. You can waste a huge amount of time there.

Even more fun: [Baby Name Voyager](http://www.babynamewizard.com/voyager#prefix=irving&ms=true&sw=m&exact=false). It graphs it and the mouse-over gives you its rank that decade. Irving peaked at spot 106 in the 1910’s. For its part Adolph peaked at number 137 in the 1880’s but amazingly it persisted in the top thousand into the 60’s.

How I’ve heard it was that Jews peaked names they saw other older American children had, which often were already passing their peak. Hence there are still some alterkocher Jewish Irvings around, their being born in 1920 to 1930 and beyond, but the slightly older Gentile Americans they were aping the names of are now dead. Basically they came into faddish names as the bubbles burst.

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