Wilbur

Wilbur comes from the Old English will ("will, desire") and burh ("fortress.") Wilbur is a surname which in the U.S. is sometimes used as a given name. The name was popular enough to be in the top 100 in the U.S. in the second decade of the 1900's, but fell steadily in popularity after that, dropping out of the top 1000 entirely after the 1970's. Wilbur as a given name is famous/notorious in at least two instances, one of which might account for its complete disappearance as a given name for baby boys. First, there was Wilbur Wright, who along with his brother Orville, became famous for inventing the first airplane that worked. Second, Wilbur was one of the main characters in E.B. White's famous children's book Charlotte's Web. For those few people out there who have never read the book, or seen the movie, or at least heard of Charlotte's Web, the Wilbur in the book is a pig who befriends a very resourceful and intelligent spider named Charlotte. Parents are probably wise to avoid naming their boys Wilbur, because sooner or later nearly every child is required to read this book for school, and while Wilbur is indeed one terrific pig, he's a pig, nonetheless.