National Megan Day

The construction is stranger than the name lets on. The same review derives Megan, probably, from Megge, an English pet form of Margaret, with the common Welsh feminine diminutive ending -en fastened to it.

Behind the Name puts it more plainly, as a Welsh diminutive of Margaret that is usually used on its own. Margaret runs back through the Latin Margarita to the Greek margarites, meaning pearl. The pearl reaches Megan the long way round, through its parent.

Megan reached the United States late, and quietly. It first cleared the Social Security Administration's five-birth publication threshold in 1922, with seven girls. It then dropped out of the published files altogether in four separate years, each time for want of a fifth birth.

One Megan of that era grew up inside British politics. Megan Lloyd George spoke only Welsh until she was four, though much of her childhood was spent in Downing Street. She took the Anglesey seat for the Liberals at 27, and the BBC calls her Wales's first female MP.

The name's own climb came later, and it was steep. Megan was a top ten name for American girls by the mid-1980s. The observance itself leaves no such trail, and searches for an originating act or a first observance come back empty, which is the ordinary condition for a name day.