An English noun meaning a young animal, used in modern naming as a compact and forceful short form.
Cub is among the most unguarded and tender of names — a word that means the young of a bear, lion, fox, or wolf, and which carries with it an entire emotional atmosphere of warmth, wildness, and new beginnings. The word's etymology is uncertain but attested in English from the early 16th century; it may share roots with the Old Irish cuib or have entered through Norse influence. What is clear is the feeling the word has always carried: something young and fierce and soft at the same time, all clumsy paws and enormous potential.
The name has several cultural touchpoints. The Chicago Cubs baseball team — named for their young, scrappy roster when the name was coined around 1902 — gave the word a tenacious, lovable-underdog energy that endured through their celebrated 2016 World Series championship. In scouting, "Cub Scout" denotes the youngest members of the Boy Scout movement, emphasizing formation and growth.
In literature and naturalist writing, the cub is a recurring symbol of the next generation's promise: think of the bear cubs in Rudyard Kipling's jungle world, or the lion cubs of the Serengeti in wildlife documentary tradition. Ernest Hemingway's son Patrick was nicknamed by his father with similar animal-world warmth. As a given name, Cub is almost startlingly rare — it exists almost entirely in the realm of nicknames and terms of endearment. Parents who choose it as a proper name are making a statement: that childhood itself is sacred, that there is dignity and beauty in being new and unfinished, and that this child arrived in the world as something wild and wonderful, not yet fully formed, full of everything.