Talmadge
Masculine
Talmadge is overwhelmingly a boys’ name — 5,635 boys against 36 girls since 1880.
Eugene Talmadge was elected governor of Georgia in 1932 and took office in 1933. The name's peak in the national data is 1933. Naming a son for a sitting governor was ordinary practice in the American South, and the numbers record it with a precision no memoir could match.
How old is the name Talmadge?
Talmadge first appears in US birth records in 1886 — 139 years ago. The typical Talmadge alive today was born around 1936, making them about 89 years old. About 2,200 people named Talmadge are estimated to be alive in the US today.
When was the name Talmadge most popular?
Talmadge peaked in 1933, reaching #411 nationally. Today it ranks #8910, 8,499 places below that high. See the whole 1933 chart.
Lists built from the same records:
Where it comes from
Origin, sound and short forms
The story of Talmadge
American political naming is easiest to see in state-level data and hardest to see in the aggregate, because a governor is famous in one state and nowhere else. Eugene Talmadge won the Georgia governorship in 1932 and served three terms in the 1930s and 1940s, and the given name's national peak in 1933 is almost entirely a Georgia phenomenon showing through in the national numbers. The same pattern produced clusters of boys named for senators, judges and local congressmen throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, usually with the surname used as a first name and the whole thing over within a decade. The Talmadge sisters, Norma and Constance, were also major silent-film stars in the 1910s and 1920s, so the name had two independent sources of visibility in the same period, which is unusual and makes the single-year peak harder to attribute cleanly.
Meaningnot established
Not established
Talmadge is an English surname whose origin is not established. It has been explained from Old French talemache, a knapsack or wallet, giving a maker or carrier of such things, and from a lost place name; neither is demonstrated. The family was prominent in colonial Connecticut and later in Georgia. The peak of the given name is 1933.
Pronouncing Talmadge
TAL-mij
Two syllables, stress on the first. The -adge is said ij, as in cabbage. Talmadge, Talmage and Tallmadge are homophones.
Nicknames for Talmadge
Moderate
What the data says
146 years of official birth records
The long climb, and where it stands now
The same years in position rather than babies
- First recorded
- 1886
- Most boys named
- 1933173 — the highest on record
- Peak rank
- #411reached in 1933
- Change vs 2022
- −11.1%8 in 2025, from 9
Rank is a position, a count is a headcount, and they move independently — a name can hold its rank while the number of babies behind it falls. Source: U.S. Social Security Administration.
Talmadge in other languages
The same name elsewhere
- Tallmadge in English — spelling variant
- Talmage in English — spelling variant
Talmadges among us
people named Talmadge are estimated to be alive in the US today
About 1 boy in 213,510 born in 2025 was named Talmadge
Estimated from SSA birth records and published actuarial life tables. Method
Is it right for you
What happens to a name after it peaks
The Rollin test
Every popular name lives one long story — a climb, a peak, a slow settling back. Talmadge's later chapters haven't been written yet, so we borrowed them: Rollin climbed just as high around 1903, and its whole arc is on record. Line the two peaks up, and Rollin's path sketches the road Talmadge is walking now.
Talmadge sits in the calm middle of the cycle — neither chasing a wave nor sliding off one. Middle-of-the-cycle names age slowly and predictably.
A scored estimate from 146 years of naming cycles — not a prophecy. Great names outlive statistics. How this is scored
Talmadge beside its neighbors
The names ranked closest to Talmadge in 2025, in babies rather than position — the bars are to scale.
US boys given each name in 2025.
The trade-off
- Tal works as a short form.
- It is a genuine surname with a documented American history.
- Two syllables with a firm first-syllable stress.
- The surname's origin is genuinely unknown.
- Three spellings are in use.
- It is closely tied to one Southern political family.
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Talmadge
Masculine · #8910 in the U.S.
Frequently asked
- How many Talmadges are there in the world?
- No country counts the world's names, so there is no worldwide figure — anyone quoting one is estimating. About 2,200 people named Talmadge are estimated to be alive in the US today.
- How popular is the name Talmadge in 2025?
- Talmadge ranks #8910 among US boy names in 2025, with 8 babies given the name.
- How rare is the name Talmadge?
- About 1 in every 213,510 US boys born in 2025 was named Talmadge — 8 in all.
- Will my child share the name Talmadge with classmates?
- Talmadge will almost certainly be the only one in school.
Ranked beside Talmadge
Names sitting at a similar level of popularity right now.
Davie#8910 · Ned#8910 · Darious#8910 · Alois#8910 · Len#8910 · Barton#8910 · Desmon#8910 · Winfield#8910
Looking for what else is popular rather than what resembles Talmadge? See the current top 100.
Choosing between Talmadge and another name?
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US figures from the Social Security Administration. 1880–2025. Data & methodology
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