The final installment!
We did the ’70s, the ’80s, and the ’90s, and now here are all of the “100+” debut names from the 2000s (so far).
- Yurem: 206 baby boys in 2007
- Greidys: 186 baby girls in 2009
- Yaire: 184 baby girls in 2001
- Jahiem: 155 baby boys in 2001
- Kelis: 108 baby girls in 2000
- Jkwon: 100 baby boys in 2004
And here are the pop culture sources:
- Yurem comes from Yurem Rojas, one of the winners of Mexican reality show Buscando a Timbiriche, La Nueva Banda. (The names Brissia and Taide also got a boost from this show.)
- Greidys comes from beauty queen Greydis Gil, who was a contestant on the reality show Nuestra Belleza Latina.
- Yaire comes from Puerto Rican singer/songwriter Yaire.
- Jahiem comes from singer/rapper Jaheim. The correct version of his name shot up from 10 to 544 baby boys [rank: 437th] from 2000 to 2001.
- Kelis comes from U.S. singer/songwriter Kelis, whose name is a combination of her parents’ names, Kenneth and Eveliss.
- Jkwon comes from rapper J-Kwon.
I’m only missing 2 “100+” debuts at this point. Both happened before 1970. The first was the girl name Torey (1959), the second was the girl name Djuna (1964).
Torey, I think, was the Riley of its day. There were a lot of Torreys floating around in the 1950s. The SS Torrey Canyon was built starting in 1959. There was a TV character named Torey Peck that probably launched the named. Torrey Pines was in the news a lot. If you dig into it, I suspect you’ll see a lot of Torreys and Toris too.
In the days of only 3 or 4 channels, even an unsuccessful show would have reached many. Plus, who knows what was on the radio back then?
Excellent point about the channels. I forget sometimes that there just weren’t many options for quite a long time.
Isn’t 1959 the year Tori enters the girls top 1000? Might Torey just be a youniqueh way of spelling that up and coming name?
@Emma – Good point! Yes, it could be.
My going theory has been that it’s the other way around — that variants of Torey picked up steam that year because of a character, Torey, in a 1959 TV show. But that might not be it, or might be be only part of the story.