"To Men Named James" by David Pailin Jr.
You inherited the name of kings, presidents, apostles, writers, athletes and men who changed entire industries. Fortunately, none of them gets to decide what you do with it.
If your name is James, history has already set an inconveniently high bar.
Kings have worn it.
Presidents have governed with it.
An apostle carried it.
Novelists put it on book covers.
Scientists attached it to discoveries.
Athletes put it on jerseys.
Musicians put it on marquees.
And somewhere along the way, James became so familiar that we stopped noticing how much history is packed into five letters.
Before James Was James
James has an interesting linguistic ancestry because, technically, it begins somewhere else.
The name ultimately descends from the Hebrew Ya’akov, or Jacob, traditionally associated with the biblical Jacob. Through Greek and Latin forms, one branch of that ancient name eventually developed into the English James.
So James and Jacob, despite sounding like distant cousins today, share the same ancestry.
The biblical James arrives much later.
Actually, several do.
Two of Jesus’ twelve apostles are named James in the New Testament, most prominently James the son of Zebedee, brother of John. He became one of Jesus’ closest disciples alongside Peter and John and was later executed, becoming traditionally regarded as the first of the apostles to be martyred.
Then there is James, the brother of Jesus, who became an important leader of the early Christian community in Jerusalem.
Before the name belonged to kings, athletes or rock stars, it was already associated with leadership, conviction and the willingness to stand behind something when doing so carried an actual cost.
Then Britain got involved.
The Name of Kings
James became especially consequential in Scotland.
Six Scottish kings ruled as James before James VI of Scotland inherited the English throne in 1603 and became James I of England, joining the crowns under one monarch.
His reign produced perhaps the most culturally consequential association with the name.
The King James Bible.
Commissioned in 1604 and published in 1611, the translation became one of the most influential books in the history of the English language.
Its phrases became our phrases.
Its rhythms influenced generations of writers.
Its language traveled through churches, homes, politics and literature for centuries.
That is an extraordinary amount of cultural baggage for anyone whose parents simply thought James sounded nice.
There Are A Lot of You
James isn’t merely old.
It is astonishingly durable.
According to the U.S. Social Security Administration, James is the most frequently given male name in America across the last 100 years, with more than 4.5 million recorded uses between 1926 and 2025.
Think about that.
Not one of the most common.
The most common.
And unlike many names that dominate one generation before disappearing into family photo albums, James keeps coming back.
In 2025, it was still No. 5 among American boys.
A name that would have sounded perfectly ordinary in 1926 remains perfectly ordinary on a birth certificate a century later.
That is difficult to do.
James has somehow become traditional without becoming antiquated.
Distinguished without becoming pretentious.
Familiar without becoming disposable.
Now comes the difficult part.
Choosing the Hall of Fame.
The James Hall of Fame
With more than four million American Jameses alone, we’re going to hurt some feelings.
Consider this the unofficial roster.
The Apostolic Original: James the Great
One of the twelve apostles and part of Jesus’ closest circle. Two thousand years later, pilgrims still travel the Camino de Santiago to the cathedral traditionally associated with his burial place.
Royalty: James VI and I
King of Scotland and later England and Ireland. His reign changed British history, but commissioning the translation that became the King James Bible gave his name an afterlife few monarchs could imagine.
Political Philosophy: James Madison
Fourth president of the United States, principal architect of the Constitution and one of the major intellectual forces behind The Federalist Papers.
Not a bad résumé before LinkedIn.
Literature: James Baldwin
This category is brutal, but Baldwin gets the chair.
Novelist, essayist and social critic whose writing on identity, love, race, sexuality, religion and America remains capable of making comfortable people uncomfortable decades after his death.
Psychology: William James
I’m allowing the middle-name technicality because the man deserves admission.
Philosopher, psychologist, Harvard professor and author of The Principles of Psychology. His work helped establish psychology as a serious academic discipline in the United States.
Music: James Brown
The Godfather of Soul.
Soul, funk, hip-hop, dance and popular performance would sound substantially different without him.
Sometimes the Hall of Fame argument can be one sentence.
Film: James Stewart
Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. The Philadelphia Story. It’s a Wonderful Life. Rear Window. Vertigo.
Next category.
Basketball: LeBron James
Yes, James is his surname.
No, I don’t care.
Four NBA championships, four MVP awards, four Finals MVPs, and the NBA’s all-time scoring record make him too significant to leave outside over administrative technicalities.
Football: James Brown?
Wrong James.
That’s why we fact-check.
Let’s give the athletic first-name position to James Nathaniel Brown anyway: Jim Brown, one of the most dominant running backs in NFL history and one of the rare athletes whose cultural importance extended substantially beyond his sport.
Business: James Sinegal
Co-founder and longtime CEO of Costco, who helped build one of America’s most admired retailers around a surprisingly durable proposition: treat customers well, treat employees reasonably well, operate efficiently, and trust scale to do the rest.
Space: James Webb
NASA’s second administrator helped lead the agency during the Apollo era. Decades later, the James Webb Space Telescope would carry his name more than a million miles from Earth.
That’s a fairly aggressive naming-rights package.
Wild Card: James Bond
Not real.
Still admitted.
Few fictional characters have influenced men’s clothing, watches, automobiles, cocktails, travel fantasies and ideas about masculine cool more than 007.
And James Bond gives us something the historical Jameses can’t.
A warning.
Being interesting is not the same thing as being admirable.
Now Forget All of Them
That is the paradox of carrying a great old name.
History gives you examples.
It does not give you instructions.
You do not need Baldwin’s pen.
Brown’s rhythm.
Madison’s political mind.
Sinegal’s company.
Stewart’s screen presence.
LeBron’s longevity.
Or Bond’s Aston Martin.
Although I’m not going to discourage the Aston Martin.
You need to discover what James means when somebody attaches your last name to it.
Because eventually every name develops two definitions.
There is the historical one.
And there is yours.
The first was assembled by people who lived before you.
The second is being assembled every day by your decisions.
When your friends hear James, what do they think?
When your spouse hears it?
Your children?
Your employees?
Your parents?
The people who have trusted you?
That is the definition that matters.
Perhaps you build something.
Perhaps you lead something.
Perhaps you become exceptional at a craft almost nobody notices.
Perhaps you become the father your children measure other men against.
Perhaps your contribution is public.
Perhaps it happens almost entirely inside your home.
Four and a half million American men have carried the name across the past century alone.
None of them has exhausted it.
That’s the encouraging thing about a common name.
You don’t have to make it rare.
You have to make it unmistakably yours.
Respect the apostles.
Read Baldwin.
Study Madison.
Listen to Brown.
Watch Stewart.
Appreciate LeBron.
And if circumstances demand it, borrow a little Bond.
Then put them away.
They already had their turn.
Be your own James.