In England, though the vernacular form Jeremy had been occasionally used since the 13th century, the form Jeremiah was not common until after the Protestant Reformation.
In America, this name received boosts in popularity from main characters in the movies The Jackal (1997) and Leap Year (2010).
As an English name it can also derive from the month of August, which was named for the Roman emperor Augustus.
This name was borne by two 20th-century kings of Belgium. Other famous bearers include the German physicist Albert Einstein (1879-1955), creator of the theory of relativity, and Albert Camus (1913-1960), a French-Algerian writer and philosopher.