Victor

189-199 CE), the first African pope and the bishop who established Easter on a Sunday. More than thirty saints have borne the name, among them Saint Victor of Marseille, a Roman soldier martyred around 290 CE.

In literature, Victor is best known as the tragic protagonist of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus (1818), whose creation of life unleashes catastrophe.

The French novelist Victor Hugo (1802-1885), author of Les Misérables (1862) and The Hunchback of Notre-Dame (1831), lent the name enormous prestige in the Romantic era.

Victor Frankl, the Austrian psychiatrist who wrote Man’s Search for Meaning (1946), extended that literary weight into the 20th century.

Victor is used continuously across Romance-language countries such as France, Spain, Italy, and Portugal, as well as throughout the English-speaking world.

In the United States, it has appeared on the Social Security Administration top 1000 every year since tracking began in 1880, peaking inside the top 100 during the 1910s and again in the 1990s.

The name is especially popular among Hispanic American families.

Contemporary bearers include tennis champion Victor Wembanyama, Nigerian footballer Victor Osimhen, and Canadian author Victor Dwyer.