Baby Girls Named Mona Lisa

Many of us probably don’t know anything about the 1950 movie Captain Carey, U.S.A.

But I bet most of us could hum a few bars of the film’s theme song, “Mona Lisa.”

The song, performed by Nat King Cole, won the Academy Award for Best Original Song in 1950. It was also the #1 song in the nation for eight weeks straight in mid-1950.

Not surprisingly, the song inspired dozens of expectant parents to name their baby girls Monalisa in 1950:

• 1949: fewer than 5 baby girls named Monalisa
• 1950: 35 baby girls named Monalisa
• 1951: 15 baby girls named Monalisa
• 1952: 7 baby girls named Monalisa
• 1953: 9 baby girls named Monalisa
• 1954: 6 baby girls named Monalisa

…and it’s been on the list ever since. (In 2010, 12 babies were named Monalisa.)

Even more impressive? The jump in the number of babies named Mona that year:

• 1948: 455 baby girls named Mona
• 1949: 515 baby girls named Mona
• 1950: 1,087 baby girls named Mona
• 1951: 1,103 baby girls named Mona
• 1952: 949 baby girls named Mona

You can bet many of those babies were given the middle name Lisa. :)

The song refers to Leonardo da Vinci’s painting Mona Lisa, a 16th-century portrait of Lisa Gherardini. Mona is a contraction of Madonna, Italian for “my lady,” and Lisa is a short form of Elisabetta, the Italian form of Elizabeth.