Silas

Eastern Orthodox tradition venerates him as one of the Seventy Apostles. The name remained largely a clerical choice through the Middle Ages and was adopted by English Puritans in the seventeenth century, who carried it to colonial New England.

Literary fame arrived with George Eliot”s novel Silas Marner (1861), the story of a wronged weaver redeemed by the love of an orphaned child. The book has remained on school reading lists for over a century.

More recently the character of Silas, the albino monk, in Dan Brown”s The Da Vinci Code (2003), and the older brother in the television western Bonanza, have refreshed the name for new generations. Silas Botwin features in Showtime”s Weeds.

According to US Social Security Administration records, Silas appeared in the top 1000 from 1880, ranked in the 200s through the late nineteenth century, then declined into rarity by the 1940s.

It returned in 1981 and has climbed steadily ever since, breaking the top 100 in 2017 and reaching rank 83 by 2023. The name is particularly favoured in the Bible Belt, the Mountain West and rural New England.

Contemporary bearers include the son of US actress Connie Britton, the son of Justin Timberlake and Jessica Biel, and Norwegian footballer Silas Andersen.