Holiday Calendar

National Drew Day

Next celebratedThursday, May 13, 2027

Some Drews are short for Andrew and some have no connection to him at all, and the day takes both. The second kind descend from Drogo, a Frankish name nobody has ever managed to translate.

Countdown to the day
--DAYS
--HRS
--MIN
--SEC
Last updated September 7, 2026 · by the Holiday Calendar TeamHave an update or spot an error?
YEARLY DATEMay 13
OBSERVED INInternationally
CATEGORYNames
ORIGIN

Community Origin

FOUNDING ENTITY
Not documented
FIRST OBSERVED
Not documented
HOW THE HOLIDAY CAME TO BE

A name day kept without being claimed.

The record holds no trace of who began National Drew Day, or in what year. What is documented is its circulation: community news threads marked the day on May 13 in two separate years.

+ Know the story? Submit a founder Help us complete this holiday
INTRO

A nickname Andrew never followed

Last year, American parents registered 541 boys named Drew. They also registered 399 girls. National Drew Day now attaches to the most even split the name has managed in 146 years of federal birth records.

Andrew went the other way entirely. In the same year, drawn from the same federal dataset, Andrew was given to 4,497 boys. Six girls received it.

So the long form came out 0.133% female. Its own clipped form came out at 42.45%. Same country, same year, same set of records, and the two have stopped behaving like one name.

Advertisement
ORIGINS

Drew Day history

INTRODUCTION

Drew is really two names that happen to be spelled the same way. Behind the Name records it as a short form of Andrew, and separately as a medieval English form of Drogo. The two have nothing to do with each other.

That is awkward for anyone wanting a tidy answer about what the name means. Andrew comes from the Greek Andreas, built on andreios, "manly, masculine". Drogo is Frankish, and its meaning is genuinely unsettled.

CHAPTER 01

A Frankish name with three possible meanings

Behind the Name lists three candidates for Drogo, and not one of them touches Andrew. Two are the Gothic dragan, "to carry, to pull", and the Old Saxon drog, "ghost, illusion". The entry traces the name to Ernst Förstemann's Altdeutsches Namenbuch of 1900, and notes that sons of both Pepin of Herstal and Charlemagne carried it.

CHAPTER 02

Two well-known Drews, two different routes

The split shows up plainly in the American record. Drew Pearson, the muckraking Washington columnist, was born Andrew Russell Pearson. His Drew is the clipping.

Drew Barrymore's is not. Her first name was the maiden name of her paternal great-grandmother, Georgie Drew, who married Maurice Barrymore in 1876. The family's own surname was Blythe, and Barrymore was the stage name.

CHAPTER 03

The column that carried the short form

Pearson spent close to fifty years working under the clipped version of his name. His "Washington Merry-Go-Round" column reached some 350 newspapers. American University, which holds his papers, puts the eventual readership at an estimated 60 million.

CHAPTER 04

The day itself leaves a thinner trail

National Drew Day has no comparable paper trail. A full-text search of the Federal Register returns zero documents for the phrase, and the main American registrar of national days does not list it either.

What the day has instead is people quietly keeping it. On a name this well documented, that turns out to be the harder thing to counterfeit.

TIMELINE

Timeline

A Drew marries a Barrymore

Maurice Barrymore married Georgiana Drew of the theatrical Drew family, carrying the surname into a stage dynasty.

Drew enters the national count

The first year of American birth-name records lists six boys named Drew, and no girls at all.

Andrew Russell Pearson is born

The future Washington columnist would spend his entire career under the short form of his first name.

A seven-year-old Drew in E.T.

Drew Barrymore won wide notice at age seven, putting the surname-derived version of the name on screens everywhere.

Girls pass 30% of Drews

For the first time in the data, girls made up more than three in ten American babies given the name.

Girls pass 40% of Drews

The share crossed forty percent for the first time, a threshold the name had never approached before the 2020s.

WHY THIS DAY MATTERS

Why We Love National Drew Day

RARITY

Only 77 American names last year came near an even split.

Of the names given to at least 100 American babies in 2025, only 77 landed anywhere between 40 and 60 percent female. Drew is one of them, and the twelfth largest name in that small group.

DIRECTION

The balance arrived from both sides at once

Boys named Drew fell by 76.2 percent from the name's mid-1980s peak. Girls named Drew rose by 229.8 percent across the same stretch, so neither movement produced the balance on its own.

EVIDENCE

The day leaves a dated, checkable trace

The community news site Fark ran a "Today is National Drew Day" front-page thread on May 13 in two separate years. Its 2026 thread carried reader comments timestamped across that same day.

BY THE NUMBERS

National Drew Day by the Numbers

10.78%
Girls' share of US Drews since 1880
1.21%
Girls' share of US Drews in the 1970s
55
Years Drew went unlisted for US girls
27.9%
Girls' share of Drews in England and Wales

GET INVOLVED

How to Celebrate National Drew Day

ASK

Ask the Drews you know which Drew they are

Some are short for Andrew and some come from a different name altogether. The answer is usually a family story rather than a naming trend.

WATCH

Watch a Barrymore across two generations

Pick something from an early Barrymore and something from Drew Barrymore's own generation. It makes for a long run of screen acting in one sitting.

READ

Read up on Drew Pearson

American University keeps his papers and a biography of his career. He is a sharp way into mid-century Washington.

SEND

Send a Drew the other etymology

Behind the Name's entry lays out both of the name's separate origins. Send it to any Drew who assumes theirs is simply short for Andrew.

Test your knowledge

How well do you know National Drew Day?

1 / 8

Besides Andrew, which older name is Drew historically a form of?

Answer

No. It is an unofficial observance with no legal standing located in the government records checked, so it is a normal working day.

COLOPHON

Sources

How we know what’s on this page. References, not endorsements.

12sources
6primary records
6independently dated
Primary records
U.S. Social Security Administration
Popular Baby Names: Beyond the Top 1000 Names
The national birth-name files behind every Drew and Andrew figure here, back to 1880.
View source
U.S. Social Security Administration
Top names of the 1960s
SSA's published decade rankings, used to check the birth-name files reproduce exactly.
View source
Office for National Statistics2025
Baby names in England and Wales: girls
Every girl's name registered in England and Wales in 2025, with counts and ranks.
View source
Office for National Statistics2025
Baby names in England and Wales: boys
The matching boys' file for England and Wales, listing Drew among 2025 registrations.
View source
Federal Register
Federal Register document search API
Full-text search of US federal documents, which returns nothing for National Drew Day.
View source
American University Library2006
Drew Pearson Biography
The archive holding his papers, on his birth name and the reach of his column.
View source
Additional coverage
Behind the Name2026-05
Meaning, origin and history of the name Drew
Lists Drew as both a short form of Andrew and a medieval form of Drogo.
View source
Behind the Name
Meaning, origin and history of the name Andrew
Traces Andrew to Greek Andreas and the root andreios, meaning manly or masculine.
View source
Behind the Name2026-05
Meaning, origin and history of the name Drogo
The Frankish name behind the other Drew, with three competing proposed meanings.
View source
Encyclopaedia Britannica
Barrymore family
The theatrical dynasty, its real surname Blythe, and the 1876 marriage to Georgiana Drew.
View source
Wikipedia
Drew Barrymore
States that her first name was her paternal great-grandmother's maiden name.
View source
Fark2026-05-13
Today is National Drew Day
An archived community thread marking the day, with comments timestamped on May 13.
View source
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE

Related holidays

THU
31
Dec 2026
National Andrea Day
Names

National Andrea Day

The same six letters are a boy's name in Italy and a girl's name in America: 3,143 Italian boys took it in 2024 against 1,628 American girls. December 31 hands the day to both readings.

46Read
FRI
16
Oct 2026
National Eddie Day
Names

National Eddie Day

Eddie has no meaning of its own. It is the front half of Edward, Edmund and Edwin, three names that mean three different things, and October 16 gives that shared syllable a day.

68Read
TUE
31
Aug 2026
National Dan Day
Names

National Dan Day

Everyone called Dan gets the day, whichever name is on their paperwork: Dan means he judged in Hebrew, while the fuller Daniel adds the element for God and means God is my judge.

58Read
FOR MARKETERS & CREATORS

Turn every day into a moment your audience actually shows up for.

8.4M
Monthly readers
5K+
Holidays tracked
Holiday Calendar for Brands Developer API