(KNOXVILLE) Peyton Manning may be gone from the University of Tennessee, but plenty of people still answer to his name on campus. Both boys and girls.
Many Tennesseans have admired the former UT quarterback, now retired from the NFL, so much that they've named a child after him. Other parents maybe just liked the sound of it, even if they weren't big Manning fans.
The trend in Tennessee appears to have started in 1995 not long after the player we knew as No. 16 came to Knoxville to get a college education and play for the Vols. Manning announced Monday he was retiring from the NFL after leading the Denver Broncos over the Carolina Panthers last month in the Super Bowl.
In 1995, 91 babies in Tennessee were named Peyton, records show. It's remained popular ever since, enjoying certain spikes such as in 2007 when the Indianapolis Colts, the pro team Manning moved on to after graduating from UT, won the Super Bowl.
The Office of Social Security tracks baby names annually. In the state of Tennessee, Peyton consistently has ranked in the top 100 most popular names each year.
In Tennessee, more than 2,400 babies have been named Peyton over the last 21 years, according to records.
Countless East Tennessee families have children named Peyton or some spelling variation thereof.
The Clapp family in West Knoxville, for example, chose Peyton for their firstborn, back when Manning was still in college.
"We liked the sound of the name, and of course Peyton Manning represented the university so well we thought it would be a great name for our daughter," David Clapp told 10News back in 2014.
UT's "Torchbearer" magazine, in a September 2014 article by Cassandra Sproles, identified 19 UT freshmen whose name had some variation of the spelling Peyton.
Among them were then freshman and Knoxville native Peyton Lara, Peyton Marshall of Sevierville and Bradley Peyton Shown of LaFollette.
When Lara was a toddler, he actually met Manning.
"I met Peyton Manning after one of the UT football practices when I was about a year old," Lara told the magazine.
He also had his photo taken with him -- the young Lara's face scrunched up in a very unhappy expression.