Popularity
Michael is a popular given name in the United States, and has been in the top three most popular name given to male babies in the U.S. for each year since 1953. It is in the top 50 most popular boys' names in England and Wales. The name has been popular in Orthodox Christian countries, and was borne by several rulers of the Byzantine and Russian Empires. In recent years, Michael has been the most popular name in the Philippines, the second most popular name in Finland (Mikael) and ranks among the top ten names in Denmark (Mikkel) and Ireland (Mícheál). It is the 23rd most popular name in Canada, and the 37th most popular in Mexico (in the form of "Miguel").
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Famous quotes containing the word popularity:
“The popularity of disaster movies ... expresses a collective perception of a world threatened by irresistible and unforeseen forces which nevertheless are thwarted at the last moment. Their thinly veiled symbolic meaning might be translated thus: We are innocent of wrongdoing. We are attacked by unforeseeable forces come to harm us. We are, thus, innocent even of negligence. Though those forces are insuperable, chance will come to our aid and we shall emerge victorious.”
—David Mamet (b. 1947)
“A more problematic example is the parallel between the increasingly abstract and insubstantial picture of the physical universe which modern physics has given us and the popularity of abstract and non-representational forms of art and poetry. In each case the representation of reality is increasingly removed from the picture which is immediately presented to us by our senses.”
—Harvey Brooks (b. 1915)
“There are few cases in which mere popularity should be considered a proper test of merit; but the case of song-writing is, I think, one of the few.”
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1845)