Where did the name Ariba come from?

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

As far as I know, the first internet- or tech-related baby name to debut on the U.S. charts was Iuma, which appeared in 2000 thanks to a baby name contest put on by the now-defunct Internet Underground Music Archive.

…But am I overlooking Ariba?

Like Iuma, the baby name Ariba debuted in 2000, then dropped off the list again in 2001:

  • 2004: 10 baby girls named Ariba
  • 2003: 7 baby girls named Ariba
  • 2002: 8 baby girls named Ariba
  • 2001: unlisted
  • 2000: 11 baby girls named Ariba [debut]
  • 1999: unlisted

Ariba may have simply been a variant spelling of the Muslim name Areeba, which started appearing in the data in the mid-1990s. The names Areebah and Aribah also debuted in the early 2000s, for instance.

On the other hand, it may have been inspired by California software company Ariba, which was making headlines around that time. The B2B company had an impressive IPO in mid-1999, and the stock price surged during 2000. (“Ariba Executes Marketplace Magic” declared The Motley Fool in July.)

Of the hundreds of technology/internet companies (WedMD, Red Hat, Priceline, iVillage, NaviSite, etc.) that went public around the same time, Ariba was one of the few with a name that sounded even remotely human.

But the stock crashed in mid-2001 with the bursting of the dot-com bubble.

What do you think: Did Ariba debut — and then drop off the list just as suddenly — thanks to tech news/hype, or were those 11 Aribas bound to show up in the data regardless due to prevailing trends?

Sources: Twitter’s Up 75%? Bah, That’s Nothing Compared With 1999, Ariba’s next big challenge: managing hypergrowth

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