Gary

Gary has several origins, which mostly all reach back to the same base origin, which is the Germanic element gar, which means "spear." Many names, such as Gareth, Garret, Garland, and Garfield, begin with this element, and Gary was originally a nickname or short form for those names. Widely used nicknames often become given names in their own right, and they also often spawned surnames. Both of these happened with Gary, so today, Gary can be a nickname, a name in its own right, or a transferred use of the surname as a given name. Gary was a very popular name in the U.S. from the 1930's through the 1960's, probably largely because of the fame of actor Gary Cooper. The name is still used, and is still in the U.S. top 500, but has been steadily dropping since the 1970's. Other famous, or at least well-known, Garys include Gary the snail, from the popular Spongebob Squarepants cartoon; actor Gary Dourdan, who plays Warrick Brown on television's CSI; Gary Levox, the lead singer for the country group Rascal Flatts; actor Gary Oldman; and the town, Gary, Indiana. Although this name is still suffering somewhat from its extreme popularity in the 20th century, and not being helped by having a famous snail using the name, Gary will most likely make a comeback and return to popular use eventually.