Recently a customer approached us with the name Tyrus. She indicated that the child had been named after Tyrus "Ty" Cobb.
While "Ty" is a Top 1000 name for baby boys today, Tyrus is not. It's ranked around #1900 (meaning less than 100 baby boys are given this name per year).
This was the first time one of our customers had tied their name-giving directly to Tyrus Raymond Cobb, the baseball great. I had already done a lot of research into Ty Cobb, so I only needed to re-familiarize myself.
I love how names work. In this case, as it turns out, a man by the name of W. H. Cobb gave this name to his first- born son on December 18, 1886.
As an educator, W.H. had recently read about the Siege of Tyre (332 BC), the most dramatic of all of Alexander the Great’s conquests. The siege became legendary for the Tyrians’ relentless resistance against Alexander the Great, whose forces famously built a massive causeway to reach the fortified island city. W.H. Cobb was impressed.
It turns out that Tyrus is the Latin form of Tyre, a Phoenician city-state and prosperous trade center of ancient times. The name comes from the Phoenician Sur “rock” (the rocky island was first civilized c. 2750 BC and its name dates to c. 1300 BC); transcribed into Hebrew Tzór, Greek: Týros and Latin Tyrus
prophetically, Tyrus “Ty” Cobb would manifest that same dogged determination to make it as a professional baseball player; like his namesake city, the “Georgia Peach” was a fierce competitor who mastered every aspect of his craft and dominated the game of the early 20th century (particularly when at bat or stealing bases); a baseball genius, Cobb was its Hall of Fame’s first inductee in 1936.
Fiercely competitive, wildly talented and famously hot-headed, Ty Cobb played the game with an intensity that bordered on mythic. Love him or loathe him, the man played to win — and perhaps there’s something strangely fitting about a boy named after one of history’s most stubbornly unconquerable cities growing into one of baseball’s most relentless competitors. Names have a funny way of foreshadowing destiny sometimes.
Originally researched and written by Julie Hackett in 2019. Updated by Name Stories® in 2026.