Kevin

Kevin is the anglicized form of the Irish masculine given name (; ; ; Latinized as ). It is composed of "dear; noble"; Old Irish and ("birth"; Old Irish ). The variant Kevan is anglicized from , an Irish diminutive form. The feminine version of the name is (anglicised as Keeva or Kweeva). History Saint Kevin (d. 618) founded Glendalough abbey in the Kingdom of Leinster in 6th-century Ireland. Canonized in 1903, he is one of the patron saints of the Archdiocese of Dublin. Caomhán of Inisheer, the patron saint of Inisheer, Aran Islands, is properly anglicized Cavan or Kevan, but often also referred to as "Kevin". The name was rarely given before the 20th century. In Ireland an early bearer of the anglicised name was Kevin Izod O'Doherty (1823–1905) a Young Irelander and politician; it gained popularity from the Gaelic revival of the late nineteenth century, with Kevin Barry and Kevin O'Higgins prominent in the Irish revolutionary period. Later it was "widely adopted throughout the English-speaking world", surging in popularity during the 1950s. The sudden rise in popularity may be tied to actor Kevin McCarthy, who first became famous with Death of a Salesman (1951). In the United States the name's popularity peaked at rank 11 in 1963. It has steadily decreased in popularity since then, but is still given with moderate frequency, at rank 89 as of 2016. Kevin fell out of the US Top 100 the following year and now ranks at Number 156. The name followed a similar trajectory in the United Kingdom, gaining popularity in the 1950s, peaking in the 1960s, gradually declining in the 1970s to 1980s, and falling out of the top 100 most popularly given names by the 1990s.