From the English word and military rank, used as a given name conveying authority and leadership.
General as a personal name is a striking artifact of a distinctly American tradition: the 19th-century practice of bestowing military titles and civic honorifics as given names. In an era when names like Colonel, Major, Captain, and Sergeant appeared in census records alongside more conventional choices, General occupied the top of the honorary hierarchy. The practice reflected both genuine reverence for military leadership — particularly following the Revolutionary and Civil Wars — and a populist American habit of celebrating ordinary men with the gravity of titles typically reserved for the powerful.
Slave narratives and Freedmen's Bureau records from the post-Civil War South show General appearing with notable frequency among African American men who chose new names after emancipation, names that claimed dignity and authority. Choosing to be named General was not ironic — it was aspirational and defiant. The name also appears among white families, particularly in the South and border states, often in honor of specific military figures or as a family surname used as a first name.
As a given name today, General is genuinely unusual — arresting, even — and carries that quality of American frontier naming at its most unabashed. It belongs to the same tradition that produced names like King, Prince, and Duke, names that dressed their bearers in borrowed grandeur and dared the world to take them seriously. In that spirit, it remains a name of considerable character.