How popular is the baby name Anita in the United States right now? How popular was it historically? Use the popularity graph and data table below to find out! Plus, see all the blog posts that mention the name Anita.

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Popularity of the baby name Anita


Posts that mention the name Anita

Popular baby names in Italy, 2021

Flag of Italy
Flag of Italy

The Southern European country of Italy — that boot-shaped peninsula that juts out into the Mediterranean Sea — shares land borders with France, Switzerland, Austria, and Slovenia.

Last year, Italy welcomed 400,249 babies.

What were the most popular names among these babies? Sofia and Leonardo.

Here are Italy’s top 50 girl names and top 50 boy names of 2021:

Girl Names

  1. Sofia, 5,578 baby girls (2.86%)
  2. Aurora, 4,991
  3. Giulia, 4,616
  4. Ginevra, 3,803
  5. Beatrice, 3,647
  6. Alice, 3,392
  7. Vittoria, 3,202
  8. Emma, 2,876
  9. Ludovica, 2,813
  10. Matilde, 2,633
  11. Giorgia, 2,359
  12. Camilla, 2,343
  13. Chiara, 2,320
  14. Anna, 2,291
  15. Bianca, 2,201
  16. Nicole, 2,169
  17. Gaia, 2,088
  18. Martina, 2,069
  19. Greta, 2,052
  20. Azzurra, 1,673
  21. Sara, 1,651
  22. Arianna, 1,647
  23. Noemi, 1,639
  24. Rebecca, 1,533
  25. Mia, 1,494
  26. Isabel, 1,422
  27. Adele, 1,349
  28. Chloe, 1,317
  29. Elena, 1,298
  30. Francesca, 1,260
  31. Gioia, 1,202
  32. Ambra, 1,171
  33. Viola, 1,152
  34. Carlotta, 1,149
  35. Cecilia, 1,144
  36. Diana, 1,117
  37. Alessia, 1,101
  38. Elisa, 1,086
  39. Emily, 1,070
  40. Marta, 1,066
  41. Maria, 989
  42. Margherita, 988
  43. Anita, 978
  44. Giada, 972
  45. Eleonora, 926
  46. Nina, 856
  47. Miriam, 842
  48. Asia, 823
  49. Amelia, 805
  50. Diletta, 804 – means “beloved” in Italian.

Boy Names

  1. Leonardo, 8,448 baby boys (4.12%)
  2. Alessandro, 4,975
  3. Tommaso, 4,973
  4. Francesco, 4,924
  5. Lorenzo, 4,642
  6. Edoardo, 4,369
  7. Mattia, 4,215
  8. Riccardo, 3,992
  9. Gabriele, 3,944
  10. Andrea, 3,860
  11. Diego, 2,946
  12. Matteo, 2,867
  13. Nicolò, 2,847
  14. Giuseppe, 2,740
  15. Antonio, 2,598
  16. Federico, 2,546
  17. Pietro, 2,247
  18. Samuele, 2,225
  19. Giovanni, 2,211
  20. Filippo, 2,113
  21. Enea, 1,963 – form of Aeneas.
    • According to Greek mythology, the Trojan hero Aeneas was an ancestor of twins Romulus and Remus, the legendary founders of Rome. One ancient source associates Aeneas’ name with the Greek adjective ainos, meaning “unspeakable, causing nervousness, fear, terror.”
  22. Davide, 1,925
  23. Christian, 1,738
  24. Gioele, 1,722
  25. Giulio, 1,713
  26. Michele, 1,685
  27. Marco, 1,541
  28. Gabriel, 1,439
  29. Elia, 1,403
  30. Luca, 1,400
  31. Salvatore, 1,374
  32. Vincenzo, 1,333
  33. Emanuele, 1,326
  34. Thomas, 1,322
  35. Alessio, 1,251
  36. Giacomo, 1,197
  37. Nathan, 1,192
  38. Liam, 1,174
  39. Simone, 1,166
  40. Samuel, 1,133
  41. Jacopo, 1,129
  42. Noah, 1,097
  43. Daniele, 1,050
  44. Giorgio, 1,025
  45. Ettore, 1,002 – form of Hector.
  46. Luigi, 996
  47. Daniel, 946
  48. Manuel, 936
  49. Nicola, 859
  50. Damiano, 830

Leonardo is still the clear favorite for baby boys, while Azzurra — no doubt inspired by Italy’s national soccer team gli Azzurri, “the Blues” — continues its rise among baby girls:

Graph of the popularity of the baby name Azzurra in Italy from 1999 to 2021.
Popularity of Azzurra in Italy, 1999-2021

Here are Italy’s 2020 rankings, if you’d like to compare last year to the year before.

Sources: How many babies are named…? – Istat, Istat Statistics, Behind the Name, Homeric Hymn to Aphrodite (transl. by Gregory Nagy)

Image: Adapted from Flag of Italy (public domain). Graph from Istat.

What gave the baby name Angie a boost in 1974?

The song "Angie" (1973) by the Rolling Stones
“Angie” by The Rolling Stones

After peaking in the mid-1960s, usage of the baby name Angie began to decline. But this decline was interrupted when, in 1974, usage suddenly shot up again, and the name reached a new peak in 1975:

  • 1977: 1,390 baby girls named Angie [rank: 191st]
  • 1976: 1,709 baby girls named Angie [rank: 153rd]
  • 1975: 1,947 baby girls named Angie [rank: 140th] – peak usage
  • 1974: 1,590 baby girls named Angie [rank: 170th]
  • 1973: 986 baby girls named Angie [rank: 255th]
  • 1972: 1,016 baby girls named Angie [rank: 260th]
  • 1971: 1,263 baby girls named Angie [rank: 236th]

Here’s a visual:

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

What caused the revival?

The Rolling Stones song “Angie,” which was released in August of 1973. The acoustic ballad reached #1 on Billboard‘s “Hot 100” chart two months later. In fact, it reached #1 in many different countries, making it a worldwide hit.

In his 2010 memoir Life, guitarist Keith Richards described how he wrote the song while he was staying at a drug clinic in Switzerland. Specifically, he wrote it around the time his girlfriend, model Anita Pallenberg, “was down the road having our daughter, Angela” (born in April of 1972).

Interestingly, though, the song was not named with the newborn in mind — the choice of name was pure coincidence:

Once I came out of the usual trauma, I had a guitar with me and I wrote “Angie” in an afternoon, sitting in bed, because I could finally move my fingers and put them in the right place again […]. I just went, “Angie, Angie.” It was not about any particular person; it was a name, like, “ohhh, Diana.” I didn’t know Angela was going to be called Angela when I wrote “Angie.” In those days you didn’t know what sex the thing was going to be until it popped out. In fact, Anita named her Dandelion. She was only given the added name Angela because she was born in a Catholic hospital where they insisted that a “proper” name be added.

What are your thoughts on the baby name Angie? Would you use it as a legal name, or would you prefer it as a nickname (for Angela, Angelica, Angelina, etc.)?

P.S. As soon as Dandelion Angela Richards “grew up a little bit,” she decided to go by her middle name, Angela, instead of her first name.

Sources:

Baby born to American activists, named “america”

Abbie Hoffman, Anita Kushner, and baby america Hoffman (early 1970s)
The Hoffman family

Media-savvy political activist Abbott “Abbie” Hoffman (1936-1989) and his second wife, Anita Kushner, welcomed a baby boy in mid-1971.

Abbie’s first two children (Andrew and Amy) didn’t have politicized names, but his third got the name america — deliberately spelled with a small a in order “to distinguish the child’s name from a jingoistic sentiment.”

[T]he birth of his and Anita’s son, “america,” was treated as a political statement, as an affirmation of their optimism about the future and their roots in American culture.

Anita added (years later) that they’d gone with a lower-case a “because [they] didn’t want to be pretentious.”

Another name they’d considered for their son? Tupac.

In the Hoffmans’ book To America with Love, one of the letters Anita wrote (in July of 1974) began:

I met Affeni [sic] Shakur today. What an up. She is vibrant, beautiful, wise with experience. We talked about our children a lot and the heavy history behind each. Did you know she named her son Tupac Amaru, after the last Inca prince who rebelled against the Spaniards? We had considered naming america that. Tupac’s the same age.

(Tupac’s mother’s name was actually spelled Afeni.)

Abbie Hoffman went underground in 1974 (in order to evade arrest). He remained in hiding, using the alias “Barry Freed,” for six years. During that period, Anita and america were under constant FBI surveillance. So Anita and Abbie began to call their son “Alan” as an added layer of protection.

Alan reverted back to his real name at the start of high school (in the mid-1980s), hoping that “america” would impress a “cute punk rock girl” in his class.

Sources:

Image: Adapted from Anita Hoffman with son by Leah Kushner under CC-BY-SA-4.0.

Famous female names from 1916

Over at The Public Domain Review, I found a collection of 51 novelty playing cards — several incomplete decks, mixed together — from 1916 that feature the images and names of popular movie actresses from that era.

Below are all the first names from those cards, plus where those names happened to rank in the 1916 baby name data. (Two-thirds of them were in the top 100, and over 95% fell inside the top 1,000.)

  • Anita (ranked 151st in 1916)
  • Anna (7th)
  • Beatriz (1,281st)
  • Bessie (56th)
  • Blanche (89th)
  • Clara (39th)
  • Cleo (180th)
  • Constance (213th)
  • Dolores (146th)
  • Dorothy (3rd)
  • Edith (28th)
  • Ella (81st)
  • Ethel (25th)
  • Fannie (116th)
  • Florence (14th)
  • Geraldine (94th)
  • Gertrude (35th)
  • Grace (26th)
  • Helen (2nd)
  • Julia (46th)
  • June (86th)
  • Kate (346th)
  • Kathlyn (731st)
  • Lenore (340th)
  • Lillian (16th)
  • Louise (18th)
  • Mabel (65th)
  • Marguerite (78th)
  • Mary (1st)
  • May (190th)
  • Mildred (6th)
  • Myrtle (58th)
  • Nellie (61st)
  • Norma (111th)
  • Olive (132nd)
  • Ormi (4,982nd)
  • Pauline (33rd)
  • Pearl (57th)
  • Ruth (5th)
  • Viola (59th)
  • Violet (83rd)
  • Vivian (77th)
  • Wanda (138th)

Which of the names above do you like best?

Source: Moriarty Playing Cards (1916) – The Public Domain Review