Holiday Calendar

National Samuel Day

Next celebratedSunday, December 27, 2026

National Samuel Day asks nothing of you: no ceremony, nothing to buy, nowhere to be. Samuel, Sam and Sammy are counted as three separate names everywhere else, and the day is where they come back together.

Countdown to the day
--DAYS
--HRS
--MIN
--SEC
Last updated September 7, 2026 · by the Holiday Calendar TeamHave an update or spot an error?
YEARLY DATEDecember 27
OBSERVED INUnited States
CATEGORYNames
ORIGIN

Community Origin

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

A day with no paperwork.

No documented founder, proclamation, registration or formal establishment record for National Samuel Day has been identified. The day circulates on social media and on holiday listing sites, and the earliest dated observance located in this research is an Instagram post from December 27, 2022.

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

The worst year for Samuel was one of its biggest

The worst year in the recorded history of the name Samuel was 1960. Among American boys it finished 91st, the lowest it has ever placed. More boys were given the name that year than in any year before 1918.

That is not a contradiction. It is what a ranking measures. Samuel's own count rose 4.60 times between the opening of the records and that low point, while the pool of listed male births it was ranked against rose 19.30 times.

The day that carries the name falls on December 27. No founder, no announcement and no establishing record for it has been located. What stands in its place is the century and a half of data underneath the name.

Advertisement
ORIGINS

Samuel Day history

CHAPTER 01

Three readings of one Hebrew name

The name comes from the Hebrew Shemu'el, and its meaning has never been settled. Behind the Name gives "name of God", built from shem, meaning name, and el, meaning God. The same entry records a second reading, from a root meaning to hear, which yields "God has heard".

Wikipedia's article on the name offers a third, and hedges it carefully. It says the name could alternatively come from a contraction of the phrase in the verse where Hannah names her son. None of the three readings has retired the other two.

As a Christian given name, Samuel came into common use after the Protestant Reformation. Behind the Name and Wikipedia both date the shift that way. Neither explains why, and the sources give sequence rather than cause.

CHAPTER 02

A hundred and forty-six years on the same list

The Social Security Administration has published a national list of baby names for every birth year since 1880. Samuel appears on the boys' list in all 146 of those files.

The shape of that run is a long dip and a long climb back. The name slid down the list through the middle of the twentieth century, then recovered steadily from the late 1980s. By 2024 it had returned to the exact rank it held when the series opened.

CHAPTER 03

A day with no paper trail

The day itself is the least documented thing here. No founder, no announcement and no registration record for National Samuel Day could be located. What exists instead is evidence that people keep it.

OK! Magazine UK marked the date in 2024 with the line "Today is National Samuel Day", and an Instagram post from a restaurant had marked the same day two years earlier. Neither explains where the date came from, and neither claims to.

GOOD TO KNOW

Surprising facts about National Samuel Day

The list Samuel competes on keeps getting longer

In 1880 the boys' file listed 1,058 different names. In 2025 it listed 13,930. Holding a place near the top means something different at each end of that range, which is why a rank from one era does not simply transfer to another.

The same rank, half the frequency

Samuel ranked 17th among American boys in 1880 and 17th again in 2024, one hundred and forty-four years apart. Over that span its share of listed male births fell by almost half, to 0.4849 percent. In 2025 the rank slipped to 18th, so this is a fact about two particular years and not about the present.

Samuele shows up in 1985 and never before

The Italian form Samuele is listed in 31 of the 146 annual files, and the earliest is 1985, when five boys carried it. For girls it is listed in none of the 146. Because the Social Security Administration publishes a name only at five occurrences or more, neither figure means none. It means fewer than five in a year.

Four spellings, just under a million births

Samuel, Sam, Sammy and Samuele together account for 997,283 births in the files between 1880 and 2025. Samuel alone carries 823,085 of them and Sam another 128,810. The records count each spelling as a separate name, so nothing in that total has been merged.

A female Sam may not be a Samuel

The files list 1,576 girls named Sam and 1,758 named Sammy. A girl recorded as Sam is at least as likely to be short for Samantha, and the data carries nothing that could tell the two apart. So those counts are a caution, not evidence about Samuel.

TIMELINE

Timeline

The federal name series opens

The first year of the Social Security Administration's national baby name data lists 1,024 boys named Samuel, putting it 17th among boys. It held that same placing in each of the next four years.

Samuel drops out of the top 50

After ranking 49th in 1927 the name fell to 52nd, beginning a run of 59 consecutive years outside the male top 50.

Samuel Beckett takes the Nobel Prize

The Nobel Prize in Literature went to Beckett for writing that, in the committee's words, in the destitution of modern man acquires its elevation. The full motivation also credits new forms for the novel and drama.

Back inside the top 50

Samuel returned to the male top 50 at exactly 50th place, ending the only absence from that list in its whole record. The recovery continued through the 1990s.

Waiting for Godot tops the century's list

The Royal National Theatre announced the result of its NT2000 poll, in which over 800 playwrights, actors, directors, theatre professionals and arts journalists each nominated ten English language plays. Beckett's play came first. Musicals were excluded from selection.

The name's biggest single year

The files record 14,813 boys named Samuel, the highest raw count in the whole series. Its share of listed male births that year still sat below the 1880 figure, which is the gap between how many and how prominent.

WHY THIS DAY MATTERS

Why We Love National Samuel Day

Persistence

Samuel never needed to be big, only to never leave.

Counting exact spellings as the files list them, twelve boys' names appear in the male top 100 in every one of the 146 years: James, William, John, Joseph, David, Daniel, Michael, Thomas, Charles, Andrew, Samuel and Robert. Ranked by total births Samuel is last of the twelve, at 820,196 against James's 5,250,638. It is also a marginal member. Tighten the cutoff to the top 90 and the group drops to ten names, with Samuel and Robert the two that fall out.

Coverage

The early files describe paperwork, not babies

The 1908 file lists 334,312 girls against 154,336 boys, better than two girls for every boy. No plausible naming behaviour produces that. It measures who later held a Social Security number, because the data is built from Social Security card applications. Any figure drawn from the early decades describes coverage of that population rather than naming behaviour.

Denominator

Two correct percentages, one comparison you cannot make

Every share quoted here is a share of listed births, meaning the names the agency actually published. The agency's own published table puts the 2025 top thousand boys' names at 75.59 percent, but its denominator is all births. Recomputed from the annual file, the same quantity comes out at 81.24 percent. Both are right, and setting one beside the other is the error.

GOOD TO KNOW

National Samuel Day Around the World

France

Samuel's name day falls on August 20, the date shared by more countries in Behind the Name's index than any other.

Poland

Also August 20, one of six countries in the index that keep the name on that date.

Croatia

The only country in the index with three separate Samuel name days: February 16, August 20 and October 10.

Sweden

September 1, a date it shares with Czechia.

Norway

February 21, the same winter date kept in Denmark.

Slovakia

August 26, the only country in the index to keep that date for the name.

Austria

October 10, which Croatia also keeps as one of its three.

GET INVOLVED

How to Celebrate National Samuel Day

EDITOR'S PICK

Look the name up in the federal data yourself

The Social Security Administration's baby name pages carry the national series in full, back to 1880. Pull the year you were born and the year your grandparents were, and watch the rank move while the count does something else entirely.

FIND

Find out which date your family would have kept

Behind the Name's name day index lists the dates country by country. If your people came from Poland, the answer is August 20. If they came from Slovakia, it is August 26.

READ

Read the play that topped the century's list

Beckett's play came first in the Royal National Theatre's NT2000 poll. Read it, or find a staging near you, and decide whether the theatre professionals got it right.

COUNT

Count the spellings at your own table

The files treat Samuel, Sam, Sammy and Samuele as four separate names and never add them together. Ask the Samuels you know which one they actually answer to. The day covers all four spellings at once, which no single row of the data does.

SEND

Send one message and you have kept it

This day comes with no ceremony and nothing to buy. Text the Samuel, the Sam and the Sammy in your contacts, which is what the people who mark the date actually do.

Test your knowledge

How well do you know National Samuel Day?

1 / 8

In which year did Samuel record its highest number of male births in the Social Security Administration's data?

Answer

Three readings compete and none has settled it. Behind the Name gives name of God, and as an alternative God has heard. Wikipedia's article adds a third, saying the name could alternatively come from a contraction of a phrase drawn from the explanation at 1 Samuel 1:20, rendered as I have asked him from God.

COLOPHON

Sources

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

11sources
6primary records
7independently dated
Primary records
Social Security AdministrationTabulated as of March 1, 2026
Popular Baby Names: National data (names.zip)
The complete national baby name series: 146 annual files covering births from 1880 to 2025, giving name, sex and count for every name with at least five occurrences in a year. Every count, rank, share and comparison on this page was computed directly from this dataset. The capture used measures 7,860,026 bytes and holds 2,181,032 rows.
View source
Social Security AdministrationTabulated as of March 1, 2026
NationalReadMe.pdf, included in names.zip
The dataset's own documentation. It states the file format, the sort order, the rank rule used on this page in full, the alphabetical tiebreak applied to ties, and the five occurrence privacy floor that makes an absent name mean fewer than five rather than none.
View source
Social Security AdministrationCovers births through 2025
Popular Baby Names: Beyond the Top 1000 Names
The agency's published table of the percentage of all births represented by the top thousand names, giving 75.59 percent for boys in 2025. Its denominator is all births, which is why it cannot be set beside a share recomputed from the annual files, and it also states the five occurrence exclusion rule.
View source
The Nobel Prize, Nobel Foundation1969 award record
Samuel Beckett, Facts
The award record for the 1969 Nobel Prize in Literature, carrying the official prize motivation quoted on this page in the timeline and the quiz, along with Beckett's dates and the languages he wrote in.
View source
OK! Magazine UK27 December 2024
Facebook post marking National Samuel Day
A named media brand observing the day on the date, quoted in the history section and in the final how to celebrate suggestion. It is evidence that the day is kept, and it makes no claim about where the day came from.
View source
Gaetano's Italian27 December 2022
Instagram post marking National Samuel Day
The earliest dated observance of the day located in this research, posted on December 27 two years before the OK! Magazine post. Like that post it records the day without accounting for its origin.
View source
Additional coverage
Behind the Name
Meaning, origin and history of the name Samuel
A reference compilation rather than a primary record. It supplies the two competing Hebrew etymologies used on this page, the note that Samuel came into common use as a Christian name after the Protestant Reformation, the diminutives Sam and Sammy, the Italian form Samuele, and a list of famous bearers.
View source
Behind the Name
Name Days for the name Samuel
The index of Samuel name days: fourteen country and date entries across twelve countries on six distinct dates, most commonly August 20. December 27 is not among them.
View source
Behind the Name
December 27 Name Days
The index read from the other direction, listing the name days kept on December 27 in twenty countries. Samuel appears on none of them, which is what allows this page to scope its statement about the date to that index rather than to name day practice generally.
View source
Wikipedia
Samuel (name)
Read as raw wikitext rather than as a rendered page. It supplies the third, hedged etymological reading drawn from the explanation at 1 Samuel 1:20 and cited to Sefaria. Its popularity paragraph carries no citations at all and is not used anywhere on this page.
View source
WhatsOnStage20 October 1998
Godot tops the chart of the 20th Century's Most Important Plays
Contemporaneous report of the Royal National Theatre's NT2000 poll result, including the method used, the number of theatre professionals surveyed, the exclusion of musicals from selection, and the placings quoted in this page's timeline and quiz.
View source
YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE

Related holidays

TUE
13
Jul 2026
National Sam Day
Names

National Sam Day

Sam has never really been counted, because every Samuel and Samantha who answers to it is registered under the long name. July 13 was picked for them by a listing site that had found four social media mentions.

93Read
TUE
24
Nov 2026
National Oliver Day
Names

National Oliver Day

Oliver Cromwell made his own first name rare in England, and it later spent 105 straight years outside America's top 100 boys' names. National Oliver Day catches it at number three.

68Read
THU
03
Dec 2026
National Isaac Day
Names

National Isaac Day

Every Isaac gets a day, however the name is spelled. England and Wales registered five spellings of it in 2025: Isaac, Issac, Ishaq, Isaak and Izaak.

68Read
FOR MARKETERS & CREATORS

Turn every day into a moment your audience actually shows up for.

8.4M
Monthly readers
5K+
Holidays tracked
Holiday Calendar for Brands Developer API