Holiday Calendar

National Grant Day

Next celebratedMonday, June 28, 2027

A Grant is not named for the verb; the surname is Norman French for great or large. June 28 belongs to a name Scotland has nearly stopped giving, down from 311 boys in 1991 to three in 2025.

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Last updated September 7, 2026 · by the Holiday Calendar TeamHave an update or spot an error?
YEARLY DATEJune 28
OBSERVED INInternationally
CATEGORYNames
ORIGIN

Community Origin

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

The name is documented. The day is not.

No founder, establishing document or first observance is on record for National Grant Day, though the personal name it marks is documented in national name records from 1880. A US Federal Register search returns no document that names the day, and no outside holiday calendar listing it was located.

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

Never once in the top 100 across 146 years of records

National Grant Day marks a name that has spent a century and a half refusing to become a hit. Grant appears in every annual list the US Social Security Administration has published since 1880, all 146 of them. In not one of those years did it reach the American top 100, and in not one did it drop out of the top 350.

Scotland has watched the opposite happen. National Records of Scotland counted 311 baby Grants in 1991, the name's best year in its own register. By 2025 the count was three.

Ulysses S. Grant has nothing to do with any of it. Nothing on the record ties this day to him, and the version of his name everyone knows was a congressman's error.

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ORIGINS

Grant Day history

INTRODUCTION

In 1839 Jesse Grant asked his congressman to nominate his eldest son to West Point. Thomas L. Hamer made the nomination and got the name wrong. He assumed the boy's first name was Ulysses and supplied a middle initial taken from the mother's maiden name, Simpson.

The boy had been born Hiram Ulysses Grant. Told at the academy to accept the new name or go home and seek a fresh appointment the following year, he accepted. Classmates seized on the initials and called him Uncle Sam, then just Sam.

CHAPTER 01

Two words, one spelling

The surname he did keep began life as a nickname. Behind the Name types Grant as a surname formed from one, taken from the Norman French grand, meaning great or large.

It looks like the ordinary English word, and its history runs somewhere else entirely. The Online Etymology Dictionary traces the verb back through Old French graanter to the Latin credentem, believing or trusting. One arrived meaning big, the other meaning take my word for it, and English gave them the same five letters.

CHAPTER 02

The long American middle

The American figures tell a story the Civil War does not explain. Grant's strongest showing in the record's first two decades came in 1895, at rank 192. Then it drifted down for four decades, to 251 boys and its lowest placing of the whole record in 1936.

The high water mark came much later. The Social Security Administration counted 3,315 boys named Grant in 1997. That was rank 115, the closest the name has come to the top hundred in the entire file.

CHAPTER 03

A day with no author

The observance itself leaves no such trail. Searches turn up nobody who started it, no proclamation, and no first observance. The US Federal Register carries nothing under the name.

So the day has nothing behind it but the name, which turns out to be plenty. Two national name records have carried Grant since 1880 and 1974, and between them they hold a better story than a founder would have supplied.

TIMELINE

Timeline

A congressman gets the name wrong

Thomas L. Hamer nominated Hiram Ulysses Grant to West Point under a name the boy had never been given, and the academy made him keep it.

The US name record opens

The first year of the Social Security Administration's national name data lists 52 American boys called Grant.

American Gothic reaches Chicago

American Gothic was exhibited at the Art Institute of Chicago, which records that it became an instant sensation that year.

Scotland starts counting names

The opening year of Scotland's baby-name register put Grant 44th among boys, with 187 births.

The Scottish high point

Grant reached 29th among Scottish boys, the strongest placing it has ever held there.

The American high point

3,315 American boys were named Grant, more than in any other year of the federal record.

WHY THIS DAY MATTERS

Why We Love National Grant Day

DIVERGENCE

America still counts it in thousands. Scotland counts in single figures

A name day is one of the few occasions anyone sets two national name records side by side. Do that here and the United States and Scotland turn out to be using one short, plain name at wildly different volumes.

LANGUAGE

The word and the name are strangers

Grant is a given name that is also a common English verb, which is why funding campaigns and grant-writing observances keep colliding with it. The reference works put the two on different Latin roots, so the resemblance is a coincidence of spelling.

PROVENANCE

A surname doing a first name's job

Grant reached English as a nickname, hardened into a family name, and only later got handed to babies as a personal one. Everyone called Grant today is carrying something that started out belonging to a whole family.

BY THE NUMBERS

National Grant Day by the Numbers

136,462
US boys on record since 1880
207
US girls on record since 1880
#139
Grant's US rank for the 1990s
5,242
Scottish boys named Grant since 1974
32
US boys in 1883, its fewest ever

GOOD TO KNOW

National Grant Day Around the World

United States

the 2025 federal name file carries 1,555 boys called Grant, at rank 228

Scotland

the last top 100 placing was 96th in 2003, and by 2025 the name had fallen to 762nd

England and Wales

the 2025 boys' table runs down to a count of three and Grant is absent, so two or fewer were registered

Strathspey

the laird Sir James Grant laid out Grantown-on-Spey here in the 1760s, rehousing tenants his own farming reforms had displaced

Canada and New Zealand

the last years Grant appeared in their published rankings were 1970 and 1987

GET INVOLVED

How to Celebrate National Grant Day

EDITOR'S PICK

Look up a Grant in the national files

The Social Security Administration publishes every US given name year by year, and Scotland's registrar does the same from 1974. Find the birth year of a Grant you know and see exactly where the name sat.

SETTLE

Settle the etymology argument at the table

Someone will insist the name means to give, because that is what the word does. The Online Etymology Dictionary puts the verb on a Latin root meaning to believe, and the name is traced to a different root entirely.

SEND

Send a Grant the story of his name

A congressman handed Hiram Ulysses Grant a name he had never been given, and West Point would not change it back. It is a good short story to have about your own name.

VISIT

Visit the town that carries the family name

Grantown-on-Spey sits in Strathspey and takes its name from the Grant family. Going there is the closest most people will get to standing inside a first name.

LOOK

Look properly at American Gothic

Grant Wood painted it in 1930 and the Art Institute of Chicago has held it ever since. Go and see it, or open the museum's own record of it, and note whose first name is on the label.

Test your knowledge

How well do you know National Grant Day?

1 / 9

What does the name Grant originally mean?

Answer

No. It is an unofficial observance rather than a public holiday, and searches for any official recognition of it came back empty, so banks, schools and offices stay open.

COLOPHON

Sources

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

12sources
9primary records
7independently dated
Primary records
US Social Security Administration2025
Popular Baby Names: national data archive (yob1880 to yob2025)
Every given name recorded on a US Social Security card application, year by year since 1880.
View source
US Social Security Administration1990-1999
Top names of the 1990s
The agency's own decade table, ranking Grant 139th for the 1990s on 25,457 births.
View source
National Records of Scotland2026-05
Babies' First Names, 2025: all names given to babies between 1974 and 2025
The Scottish registrar's full list of first forenames, with counts and ranks from 1974.
View source
Office for National Statistics2025
Baby names in England and Wales: boys
Annual spreadsheets listing every boy's name registered in England and Wales, down to three births.
View source
National Park Service2021-07
Ulysses S. Grant Timeline
The birth name Hiram Ulysses Grant and the 1839 nomination error that replaced it.
View source
Art Institute of Chicago
American Gothic (collection record)
The museum's catalogue entry for the 1930 Grant Wood painting it owns.
View source
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences1970-04-07
The 42nd Academy Awards, 1970
The Academy's ceremony record, with Cary Grant's Honorary Award presented by Frank Sinatra.
View source
Grant Professionals Association
International Grant Professionals Day
The association's page for its own day, held the second Friday in March.
View source
US Federal Register
Documents full-text search API
Full-text search of federal documents, returning nothing for this day's name.
View source
Additional coverage
Behind the Name2019-06
Grant: meaning, origin and history
Derives the name from Norman French grand and tracks its ranking in six countries.
View source
Online Etymology Dictionary
grant
Traces the English verb and noun to Old French creanter and Latin credentem, to believe.
View source
Undiscovered Scotland
Grantown on Spey
The Strathspey town laid out by Sir James Grant to rehouse displaced tenants.
View source
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