Holiday Calendar

National Timothy Day

Next celebratedWednesday, November 11, 2026

In 1998 Irish registrars recorded 41 boys named Timothy and 41 named Tadhg, and printed the substitute and the name it had replaced on the same line. November 11 is the day the borrowed Greek name keeps.

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Last updated September 6, 2026 · by the Holiday Calendar TeamHave an update or spot an error?
YEARLY DATENovember 11
OBSERVED INInternationally
CATEGORYNames
ORIGIN

Community Origin

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

A day the record does not explain.

No proclamation, statute, or registration for National Timothy Day appears on any record checked for this page, and no person or organisation has been identified as having begun it. The day circulates through holiday listings and under the hashtag NationalTimothyDay, and those listings agree on 11 November. That agreement is evidence that people mark the day. It is not evidence of who started it, and this page does not guess.

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INTRO

Ireland spent generations calling Tadhg by another name

Ireland's baby name register tells a story that runs backwards. In 2025 the Gaelic name Tadhg went to 286 newborn boys, against twelve given the name Timothy. For most of the register's history the traffic ran the other way.

Patrick Woulfe's Irish Names and Surnames, published in 1923, lists Tadhg as an ancient and very common Irish name meaning poet or philosopher, and records that it was by then generally anglicised Timothy. Timothy is not an Irish name at all. It is Greek, and by Woulfe's day it was generally what an Irish Tadhg was called in English.

The day itself is thinner than the name it carries. Searches turned up no proclamation, no statute, no registration and no founder. What the registers hold instead is a long run of evidence about the name, kept by two governments whose numbers point in opposite directions.

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ORIGINS

Timothy Day history

INTRODUCTION

Three different things answer to the name Timothy, and centuries separate them. Untangling them is most of the name's history.

CHAPTER 01

The Greek name and the saint

Timothy is the English form of the Greek Timotheos, built from timao, meaning to honour, and theos, meaning god. The New Testament Timothy travelled with Paul and received two of the epistles that carry his name. He came from Lystra in Lycaonia, and tradition holds that he was martyred at Ephesus after protesting the worship of Artemis.

He is commemorated in January, not in November. The Western church keeps a memorial of Saints Timothy and Titus on 26 January. The Orthodox commemoration of the Apostle Timothy falls on 22 January.

CHAPTER 02

The English name arrives after the Reformation

For all that, Timothy was not an English given name for most of the time since. Behind the Name records that it was not used in English until after the Protestant Reformation. Roughly fifteen centuries sit between the man and the name as English speakers now use it.

CHAPTER 03

Two registers, two answers

In Ireland the name arrived by substitution. Woulfe's 1923 entry for Tadhg records it as generally anglicised Timothy, a Greek name doing duty for an Irish one. Why the two were paired, he does not say.

Ireland's own published name series opens in 1964. Timothy stands at number 26 in that first table, and Tadhg is not in it at all. By 2025 the two have changed places.

In America the swap never had to happen. What crossed the ocean was the substitute, not the name underneath it.

Nobody has stepped forward to claim 11 November for any of this. The day rests on the name's record rather than on one of its own.

TIMELINE

Timeline

Timothy in the first US file

American national name data begins here, and 70 boys are recorded with the name in that first year.

Woulfe records the substitution

Irish Names and Surnames describes Tadhg as by then generally anglicised Timothy, fixing the swap in print.

Timothy enters the US top 100

The name climbed into the American top 100 for the first time, having got no closer than 108th in any earlier year.

Ireland's name series opens

The first year of Irish published baby name data ranks Timothy at number 26, with Tadhg absent from the table entirely.

Tadhg passes Timothy in Ireland

For the first time in the Irish series more boys were registered as Tadhg than as Timothy, and Tadhg has led in every year since.

Timothy leaves the US top 100

The name dropped out of the American top 100 after sixty-five unbroken years inside it, and has not been back.

GOOD TO KNOW

Surprising facts about National Timothy Day

One year, the two names were exactly level

In 1998 Irish registrars recorded 41 boys named Timothy and 41 named Tadhg. Because Ireland ranks tied counts by sharing a position, the official table printed both at number 101, the substitute and the name it had been substituting for, on the same line.

The name has three different peak years

Timothy's American peak lands on a different year depending on what you measure. By raw count it is 1959. By share of boys in that year's data it is 1967. By rank it is a three-way tie at number 11, shared by 1960, 1966 and 1967.

Tadhg barely exists in the American record

The Irish original does not appear in US national data until 1992, and totals 613 boys across the whole series. Timmy, a nickname, outnumbers it more than forty times over at 25,755.

In Ireland the two names are almost level overall

Add up Ireland's whole run from 1964 to 2025 and the totals nearly match: 6,396 boys named Timothy and 6,016 named Tadhg. The aggregate hides the story. Timothy's total is front-loaded and Tadhg's is back-loaded.

Tim has never once outnumbered Timothy

Across all 146 years of American data, checked year by year, the short form has never had a bigger annual count than the full name. Whatever the two curves do, they never cross.

The name took off before the baby boom did

Timothy rose by 53.5 percent in a single year in 1937, at a time when the total number of boys in the file barely moved. The jump was the name changing, not the data changing.

BY THE NUMBERS

National Timothy Day by the Numbers

1,084,192
US boys named Timothy since 1880
146 of 146
Years Timothy appears in US data
19
Years Timothy spent in the US top 20
4,328
US girls named Timothy since 1880
374
US boys named Timothee since 1975

WHY THIS DAY MATTERS

Why We Love National Timothy Day

Reversal

Two registers, opposite answers, each recording half of one event.

Ask the Irish and American registers what became of this name and they give opposite answers, because each of them recorded a different half of the same event. Neither is wrong. It is a useful thing to know about names in general: asking whether a name is in decline has no answer until somebody names a country.

Precision

A rank is a number plus a rule

The US numbers its name lists straight down the page, so tied counts get consecutive positions. Ireland gives tied counts the same position and then skips. Both are honest and they produce different printed ranks for the same underlying data, which is why a count travels between countries and a rank does not.

Currency

The name is still being given

Timothy reads as a mid-century name, and the American record broadly agrees that its strongest years are behind it. It has not gone anywhere, though. American parents still gave the name to 1,734 boys in 2025, so a name day here lands on a name in current use rather than on one that only survives in old registers.

GET INVOLVED

How to Celebrate National Timothy Day

EDITOR'S PICK

Look up the birth year

Pull the American national name files for the year a Timothy you know was born and see where the name stood that year. They run from 1880 to 2025 and are published in full.

COUNT

Count the spellings separately

Timothy, Tim, Timmy and Timothee are four different entries in the data, not one name in four costumes. Adding them together is an easy way to get a name day fact wrong.

LEARN

Learn the name it replaced

Tadhg is an old Irish name meaning poet or philosopher, and Irish parents give it to hundreds of boys a year now. Anyone celebrating a Timothy with Irish family can learn the other half of the pair.

KEEP

Keep the saint out of it

Saint Timothy has his own commemorations and they fall in January, in both the Western and the Eastern calendars. If the conversation drifts there on a November name day, it has drifted to a different observance.

Test your knowledge

How well do you know National Timothy Day?

1 / 5

What language does the name Timothy come from?

Answer

No. It is an unofficial observance with no legal standing: no proclamation, statute or registration for it turned up on any record checked for this page.

COLOPHON

Sources

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

7sources
4primary records
5independently dated
Primary records
U.S. Social Security Administration2026-03-01
Beyond the Top 1000 Names: national baby name data files
The per-year national files for 1880 to 2025 and the accompanying readme, which sets the five-occurrence floor and states that names are ranked straight down the list with ties broken alphabetically. Every American figure on this page is computed from these files.
View source
Central Statistics Office, Ireland2025-07-17
VSA50: Boys Names in Ireland with 3 or More Occurrences
The full Irish boys' name series from 1964 to 2025, published down to every name given three or more times in a year. Source of the Timothy and Tadhg counts and ranks, including the tie at number 101 in 1998.
View source
Central Statistics Office, Ireland2026
Irish Babies' Names 2025, Key Findings
States that Rían was the most popular boys' name in 2025 and that the series began in 1964. Used as the published control against which this page's parse of the raw table was checked.
View source
Orthodox Church in America
Lives of all saints commemorated on January 22
The Orthodox commemoration of the Apostle Timothy, kept on 22 January, and his origin in Lystra in Lycaonia. Cited only for that January observance, which is not the November name day.
View source
Additional coverage
Behind the Name
Timothy: meaning, origin and history
Gives the Greek Timotheos and its elements timao and theos, lists Tim and Timmy as the English diminutives and Timothee as the French form, and states that Timothy was not used as an English name until after the Protestant Reformation.
View source
Library Ireland1923
TADHG, in Patrick Woulfe, Irish Names and Surnames
Woulfe's 1923 entry describing Tadhg as an ancient and very common Irish name meaning poet or philosopher, still found in every part of Ireland but by then generally anglicised Timothy.
View source
Catholic Culture2026-01-26
Memorial of Saints Timothy and Titus, Bishops
The Western liturgical memorial of Saints Timothy and Titus on 26 January. Cited only for that January observance, which is a different day from the November name day.
View source
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