Holiday Calendar

National Jamie Day

Next celebratedSaturday, February 13, 2027

An Edinburgh man called Jamie Duff had a craze for attending funerals, and Scots ended up naming the mourning crape itself after him. February 13 goes to a name Scotland reads as a boy's and America as a girl's.

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Last updated September 7, 2026 · by the Holiday Calendar TeamHave an update or spot an error?
YEARLY DATEFebruary 13
OBSERVED INInternationally
CATEGORYNames
ORIGIN

Community Origin

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

The day arrived unsigned.

The origin of National Jamie Day is undocumented. The day circulates on holiday-listing sites and on social media, but searches for an establishing act, a sponsoring organisation, a first observance and a reason for the February 13 date returned only those listings. A search of the US Federal Register for the day's exact name returns zero results.

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

A Scots pet name that crossed the Atlantic and switched sexes

National Jamie Day lands on a name that cannot agree with itself. Ask someone in Scotland to picture a Jamie and they will picture a boy. Ask someone in the United States and they will not.

Both are reading their own birth registers correctly. Scotland's register opens in 1974. It has since recorded 17,152 boys called Jamie.

The girls number 822. The American figures invert that almost exactly: 78.7% of the babies given the name in the United States were girls, on a count that stops a little short of Scotland's. One name, two national registries, two opposite answers.

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ORIGINS

Jamie Day history

INTRODUCTION

In 18th century Edinburgh a man called Jamie Duff had a craze for attending funerals. Scots took his name and handed it to the mourning itself. The strips of crape and linen that mourners sewed onto a sleeve or a hat became Jamie Duffs.

A language does not do that with a word it is only borrowing. By then Jamie was not a nickname that visitors used for Scottish men. It was Scots vocabulary, with its own idioms and its own regional shapes.

CHAPTER 01

The paper trail starts in 1720

The Scottish National Dictionary files Jamie as a pet form of James, the Scots counterpart of English Jimmy. Its dated evidence begins in 1720, in A. Pennecuik's Helicon. The Jeamy spelling turns up earlier still, in a Renfrewshire judicial record for 1703.

The writers followed the speakers. Robert Burns used the name in The Kirk's Alarm in 1789. Walter Scott used it in Waverley a generation later.

CHAPTER 02

Scots never settled on one form

Scotland kept experimenting with the ending. Renfrewshire was writing Jameoc by 1827. Banffshire had Jamock in 1869, and Moray produced Jamick three years after that.

Orkney went its own way entirely with Jemmoo. The name also picked up a second idiom, a good deal less solemn than the first. To have been talking to Jamie Moore was to be drunk.

CHAPTER 03

Then it left home

One line in Behind the Name marks the turn that split the modern name in two. A Lowland Scots diminutive of James has, since the late 19th century, also been used as a feminine form. Britain largely ignored that second life, and America built on it.

National Jamie Day sits on top of all of this with nothing of its own. The name has a paper trail running back to the early 1700s. The day that honours it has none, and a search of the US Federal Register for its exact name returns nothing at all.

TIMELINE

Timeline

Jeamy enters a Renfrewshire record

The spelling Jeamy appears in Renfrewshire judicial records, the earliest date the Scottish National Dictionary cites in its entry for the name.

The dictionary's evidence begins

A. Pennecuik's Helicon supplies the earliest dated citation in the dictionary's citation list for Jamie.

Burns puts it in a satire

Robert Burns uses the name in The Kirk's Alarm, one of the citations the dictionary lists for it.

Walter Scott uses it in Waverley

Scott uses the name in Waverley, carrying the dictionary's citation trail into the 1800s.

Scotland's name register opens

The first year of Scotland's continuous forename record ranks Jamie 72nd among boys' names, with 88 babies given it.

Jamie peaks in Scotland

The name reaches sixth among Scottish boys' names, a position it matches again two years later.

WHY THIS DAY MATTERS

Why We Love National Jamie Day

AMBIGUITY

He took a name that did not announce his sex.

Eric Marlon Bishop was doing impressions of Ronald Reagan and Mike Tyson at San Diego comedy clubs, and he worked out that women were finding it easier to get stage time. Britannica records that he responded by adopting the gender-neutral name Jamie Foxx.

CROSSING

The American Jamie has changed sides twice

Boys held the majority in the United States from 1971 to 1975, then lost it for forty-five years. In 2021 they took it back, and still held it in 2023.

LINEAGE

Jamie, Séamus, Giacomo and Kimo are one name

Behind the Name traces Jamie back to the Hebrew Ya'aqov, by way of Biblical Greek Iakobos, Biblical Latin Iacobus and Late Roman Iacomus. Séamus, Giacomo, Jaume and Kimo are that same name in Irish, Italian, Catalan and Hawaiian.

BY THE NUMBERS

National Jamie Day by the Numbers

94%
Boys' share in England and Wales
87.1%
Girls' share in the US, 1985
#18
Peak US girls' rank, 1976
#108
Best Scottish girls' rank ever

GET INVOLVED

How to Celebrate National Jamie Day

EDITOR'S PICK

Look the name up in a national register

Scotland publishes the forenames given to babies registered there since 1974, year by year and ranked. The full list is a free download, so any Scottish Jamie can look up their own year.

READ

Read a Scots dictionary entry out loud

The Scottish National Dictionary's entry runs to mourning crape and a euphemism for drunkenness in a few lines. It is short enough to read to whoever is in the room.

ASK

Ask a Jamie whether James is on the certificate

Jamie began as a Scots pet form of James rather than a name in its own right. It is worth finding out which of the two a Jamie you know was actually registered under.

ARGUE

Argue about which country the name belongs to

Behind the Name's most recent rankings put Jamie 47th in Ireland and 75th in Scotland. Any Jamie will have an opinion about which of those counts as the real home.

TRY

Try one of the older Scots forms for a day

Jameoc, Jamock, Jamick and Jemmoo were all in real use in different corners of Scotland. Pick the one from the region your family came from.

Test your knowledge

How well do you know National Jamie Day?

1 / 8

In what year does the Scottish National Dictionary's dated evidence for the name Jamie begin?

Answer

No. It is an unofficial observance with no legal standing anywhere it has been traced, so it is a normal working day.

COLOPHON

Sources

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

7sources
5primary records
3independently dated
Primary records
National Records of Scotland2026-05-26
Babies' First Names 2025
Scotland's official birth-registration statistics for forenames, including a downloadable file of every first name given to a baby registered in Scotland from 1974 to 2025 with the registry's own annual count and rank for each sex.
View source
Office for National Statistics2026
Baby names in England and Wales: from 1996
The official annual rank and count for every registered baby name in England and Wales from 1996 to 2025, split by sex across two worksheets.
View source
US Social Security Administration
Popular Baby Names: national data
The agency's national baby-name dataset, covering every name recorded on US birth records since 1880 apart from those with fewer than five occurrences, which are withheld to protect privacy.
View source
Dictionaries of the Scots Language1960
Scottish National Dictionary: Jamie, prop. n.
The scholarly Scots-language entry for the name, giving its definition as a pet form of James, its dated print citations from 1703 and 1720 onward, its regional diminutive variants and the two Scots idioms built on it. First published in 1960 in Volume V.
View source
Federal Register
Document search for the phrase National Jamie Day
The US government's daily journal of proclamations, rules and notices, searched for the day's exact name. It returns no documents.
View source
Additional coverage
Behind the Name
Meaning, origin and history of the name Jamie
An etymological reference entry recording Jamie as a Lowland Scots diminutive of James used as a feminine form since the late 19th century, with its recorded variants, the Scottish feminine form Jamesina and its cousins across other languages.
View source
Encyclopaedia Britannica
Jamie Foxx
A biography of the performer born Eric Marlon Bishop, recording that he adopted the gender-neutral name Jamie Foxx after finding it was easier for women to get stage time at open-mike nights.
View source
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