Lionel Richie, born 1949, has been a judge on “American Idol” since 2018, which begins its 23rd season on March 9. Richie became famous singing with funk/soul group Commodores in the 1970s.
His duet of “Endless Love” with Diana Ross in 1980 is a top 20 bestselling single of all time. He’s sold more than 100 million records, and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2022.

Lionel’s a French diminutive of Leon, from Latin for “lion.” It became well known because of Sir Lionel, a cousin of Sir Lancelot introduced in anonymous Lancelot-Grail tales written in French in the 13th century. Lionel, a knight of the Round Table, was hero of a ballad in which he slays a huge wild boar.

King Edward III was a fan, role-playing the fictional Sir Lionel in Round Table tournaments. Edward’s second son Lionel, Duke of Clarence (1338-1368), was named after him.

Though never common, Lionel remained in regular use among English nobles. Lionel Sackville (1688-1765), created Duke of Dorset by George I in 1720, was Lord Lieutenant of Ireland 1730-1737 and 1750-1755.

Lionel Wafer (1640-1705) was a Welsh ship’s surgeon who lived with the Guna people of Panama in the 1680s, adopting their customs, including body paint and nose rings. His 1695 book about this adventure was popular across Europe.
“Lionel and Clarissa”, a 1748 comic opera by Isaac Bickerstaffe, in which Lionel and Clarissa overcome their fathers’ objections to their marriage, was popular for two centuries, with its repeated line “O what a night for love!” quoted by Willa Cather and others.

American author James Fenimore Cooper published novel “Lionel Lincoln” in 1825. There Lionel, a British major during the American Revolution, rejects his friends’ arguments and refuses to join the American cause, symbolizing Cooper’s view of corrupt English nobility.

The U.S. Census of 1850 found 111 Lionels, while Britain’s 1851 census included 590, when the two countries had similar size populations. Lionel’s lesser American use was linked to its “effete British aristocrat” image, reinforced by Cooper’s novel.
When Social Security’s yearly baby name lists begin in 1880, Lionel ranked 718th. It steadily rose, ranking 295th in 1934. It was probably helped by actor Lionel Barrymore (1878-1954), who won an Oscar for “A Free Soul” playing an alcoholic lawyer defending his daughter’s fiancé on a murder charge. Today, he’s remembered as Mr. Potter in “It’s A Wonderful Life” (1946).

Lionel, along with other names like Percy and Reginald with British upper-class images in America, appealed more to Black than White parents during the 20th century. Richie’s early career reinforced this, helping Lionel rise from 550th in 1979 to 387th in 1984.

Happy Birthday to W. P. Inman, Albus Dumbledore and Pius XIII!

British actor Jude Law turns 52 today. Oscar-nominated for playing Confederate veteran W. P. Inman in “Cold Mountain” (2003), he was wizard Dumbledore in “Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald” (2018) and “Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore” (2022). He played Pius XIII in HBO’s “The Young Pope” (2016) and “The New Pope” (2020) and now stars as FBI agent Terry Husk in “The Order,” which opened Dec. 6.

Jude is from the Hebrew name Yehudah, which means praise. In Genesis, Leah, Jacob’s first wife, names her fourth son Judah while praising God. The tribe of Judah later gave its name to the southern Hebrew kingdom after it split from Israel.

In English Bibles, Judah is the Old Testament form. In the New Testament, Judas (the Greek form) names several men, including two apostles — Judas Iscariot, Jesus’s betrayer, and a Judas mentioned in the gospels of Luke and John. Traditionally, he’s considered the same as Matthew and Mark’s Thaddeus.

The New Testament’s next-to-last book is the Epistle of Jude. Jude was originally the French form of Judas. In most other languages, the epistle is called Judas. English translations probably used “Jude” to assure readers it wasn’t written by Iscariot.

Because of that, in English the “Thaddeus” apostle is usually called Saint Jude, even though he’s Judas in the Bible. Traditionally, St. Jude was martyred in Persia alongside fellow apostle Simon the Zealot.

Jude was rare as an English boy’s name. After the Reformation, Jude was used a bit more as parents searched the Bible for names. The 1851 British census found 92 Judes, while the 1850 U.S. census included 125. Jude was more common among Puritan descendants in the North. Only seven of 1850’s Judes were born in the South.

Catholics and Anglicans pray to St. Jude for “hopeless cases,” reasoning since Jude’s name is close to “Judas,” he is prayed to rarely and so is the “saint of last resort.”

Comedian Danny Thomas prayed to St. Jude when starting his career, promising to establish a hospital if he had success. When Thomas became a television star through “Make Room for Daddy” (then “The Danny Thomas Show” starting with the fourth season, 1953-1964), he immediately began raising money to build St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee. Today it’s one of the world’s most famous charities.

Although the hospital opened in 1962, Jude first became a top 1,000 baby name in the United States in 1954 just after Thomas began promoting his plan.

In 1969 Jude jumped 69% to rank 669th. The Beatles’ “Hey Jude,” the No. 1 single of 1968, was responsible. Paul McCartney first titled the song “Hey Jules” after John Lennon’s son Julian.

Jude Law’s parents named him after both the song and Thomas Hardy’s famous novel “Jude the Obscure” (1895). Law’s career clearly revitalized Jude in the United States. Jude had fallen below the top 1,000 when Law’s first Oscar-nominated role as Dickie in “The Talented Mr. Ripley” (1999) made him famous.

The name has boomed in recent years, peaking at 151st in 2021 when 2,504 were born. It receded to 161st in 2023, perhaps because of competition from Judah, which ranked 176th that year. Jude and Judah are both helped by sounding like hugely popular Lucas, Luca and Luke.

With Law nearing grandfather age, Jude may fall further. However, it’ll be decades before the name Jude is again obscure.

“Dexter: Original Sin,” a prequel to Showtime’s hit series “Dexter” (2006-2013), about a serial killer who murders other murderers, premiered on Paramount+ with Showtime on Dec. 13. Patrick Gibson stars as young Dexter Morgan, with Michael C. Hall, star of “Dexter,” providing his “inner voice.”

Dexter is an English surname from Old English “deagestre.” This originally meant a woman who dyed cloth, but by 1200 was used for both men and women dyers.

By pure coincidence, “dexter” is also Latin for “right-handed” or “skillful.” Occasionally parents who knew Latin may have chosen Dexter because of that.

However, it’s clear the surname was the main source. Britain’s 1851 census included only 22 men with Dexter as a first name, while 1850’s United States census had 1,903, when total populations were about equal. Of those American Dexters, 564 were born in Massachusetts, 637 in the rest of New England, and 387 in New York, whose upstate was mostly settled by New Englanders.

Samuel Dexter (1761-1816) served as a representative and senator from Massachusetts before being named Secretary of War in 1800 and Secretary of the Treasury in 1801. Several of his relatives were prominent in Massachusetts or New York.

Timothy Dexter (1747-1806) of Newburyport, Massachusetts, was an uneducated man who married a rich widow and became extremely wealthy when Revolutionary War currency he bought when most thought it completely worthless was unexpectedly redeemed by the government at 1% of its face value. He faked his own death to see who’d show up to his funeral. His 1802 book “A Pickle for the Knowing Ones,” touting his unlikely success, was a bestseller despite having almost no punctuation. In the second edition, he included two pages printed with only punctuation marks, telling readers to insert them wherever they wanted.

The politician and the rich eccentric together made Dexter a well-used first name in New England. In 1880, when Social Security’s name lists start, Dexter ranked 809th.