Where did the baby name Daliah come from in 1965?

Actress Daliah Lavi in the movie "Lord Jim" (1965).
Daliah Lavi in “Lord Jim

The baby name Daliah debuted in the U.S. baby name data in the mid-1960s:

  • 1967: unlisted
  • 1966: unlisted
  • 1965: 13 baby girls named Daliah [debut]
  • 1964: unlisted
  • 1963: unlisted

What put it there?

Israeli actress Daliah Lavi, who played the nameless love interest of the main character in the 1965 movie Lord Jim — a screen adaptation of the Joseph Conrad novel.

It was supposed to have been her “breakout American role,” but the film flopped, so she “accepted a new career path as scantily clad femmes fatales” in spy-spoof films like Casino Royale (1967).

Lord Jim was actually her second American movie. The first was Two Weeks in Another Town (1962), for which she’d earned a Golden Globe nomination for New Star Of The Year.

Lavi’s birth name was Daliah Lewinbuk. The Hebrew name Daliah (more often written Dalia or Dalya) means “branch.”

What are your thoughts on this name? How would you spell it?

Sources: Lord Jim – Wikipedia, Daliah Lavi, Actress in Both Dramas and Spoofs, Dies at 74, Daliah Lavi – Golden Globes, Dalia – Kveller

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