Sullivan is from the Irish Ó Súileabháin — súil (eye) + dubh (dark) + án (diminutive) — descendant of the little dark-eyed one. A modern American baby name in the broader Irish-surname-as-given-name aesthetic. Sir Arthur Sullivan (1842-1900) — male; English composer; partner of librettist W.S. Gilbert in the legendary Gilbert and Sullivan partnership; together they wrote 14 comic operas including The Mikado (1885), H.M.S. Pinafore (1878), The Pirates of Penzance (1879), and Iolanthe (1882) — defining the English comic-opera tradition; their works remain in continuous repertoire 140+ years later. Anne Sullivan (1866-1936) — American teacher; Helen Keller's iconic teacher; the dramatization of her work in The Miracle Worker (1962 film) won Anne Bancroft the Academy Award for Best Actress as Sullivan. Ed Sullivan (1901-1974) — male; American TV host; The Ed Sullivan Show (CBS 1948-1971); introduced The Beatles, Elvis Presley, and The Rolling Stones to American audiences. Big Sullivan, MTV's Sullivan & Son — various other figures. Louis Sullivan (1856-1924) — male; American architect; "the father of skyscrapers" — coined the phrase "form follows function." John L. Sullivan (1858-1918) — male; American heavyweight boxing champion.
Featured throughout English comic opera and American education.
Sullivan does not currently appear in the US Social Security Administration's top 1,000 girls' names, so we don't publish a US rank or birth count for it. That says nothing about the name's standing elsewhere in the world — only that it sits outside the ranked US data we rely on.
In Pythagorean numerology the letters of Sullivan reduce to 2, The Peacemaker. This is a traditional interpretive system, not a factual claim about the name.