Mystery baby name: Clione

Graph of the usage of the baby name Clione in the U.S. since 1880
Usage of the baby name Clione

I’ve long been curious about the name Clione.

It debuted rather impressively in the national dataset in 1938, but dropped off the next year and hasn’t been back since.

  • 1940: unlisted
  • 1939: unlisted
  • 1938: 16 baby girls named Clione [debut]
  • 1937: unlisted
  • 1936: unlisted

Clione is similar to the name Cleone, which was in use during the first half of the 20th century, but I doubt it’s a variant because Clione’s single-year appearance doesn’t match up with Cleone’s peak usage (from the mid-1910s to the mid-1920s).

One adorable thing that kept thwarting my search efforts was the genus Clione, which includes floating sea slugs or “sea angels”:

clione - sea angel
Clione limacina

Not the source of the name, but makes a great image for this post. :)

Can anyone offer any clues about Clione?

4 thoughts on “Mystery baby name: Clione

  1. Thanks again for your help!

    I hadn’t found that story. I wonder if it appeared later on in U.S. newspapers? Or maybe this is a set of characters he wrote about a few times? Hm.

    (Oh man, if people only knew how many gazillions of hours I’ve spent trying to figure out certain names… :)

  2. That’s an interesting theory, as the names are pretty close. I tried searching for a person/event involving the name Cliodhna from 1937-1938, though, and didn’t have any luck.

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