Independent baby name blog & directory, est. 2006.
How popular is the baby name Barbara in the United States right now? How popular was it historically? Find out using the graph below! Plus, see baby names similar to Barbara and check out all the blog posts that mention the name Barbara.
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Number of Babies Named Barbara Born in the U.S. Since 1880
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Avast! Did you know that today is Talk Like a Pirate Day?
“Arrr” itself doesn’t make a great name — even for pirates — but here’s the next best thing: over 120 names that feature the “ar”-sound.
Which of the “ar”-names above do you like best? Did I miss any good ones?
(Image from Pixabay)
Additions, 9/20:
While looking at multiples from 1944 last month, I found sources claiming that both Mary & Marjorie Vaughan and Lois & Lucille Barnes were the “original” twins in the ads for Toni Home Permanents (tagline: “Which twin has the Toni?”).
Many sets of twins were involved in the Toni ad campaigns of the ’40s, though, so I’m not sure if any single set of twins can be called the “original” twins. For example, a November 1949 issue of LIFE included a full-page Toni ad with six sets of twins:
Let’s pretend you’re about to have twin girls, and you have to give them one of the name-pairs above. Which pair do you choose?
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It’s been a while since I posted about babies born on airplanes (and named after that fact!). So here are two three at once:
And here are some of the earlier airplane babies:
Do you know of any that I missed?
Sources:
The station was created and funded by legendary record producer Sam Phillips — the guy who discovered Jerry Lee Lewis and Johnny Cash, among others.
WHER’s original staff included Sam’s wife Rebecca (Becky) along with seven other women: Barbara Gurley, Donna Rae Johnson, Dorothy “Dot” Fisher, Dotty Abbott, Fay Bussell, Phyllis Stimbert, and Roberta Stout.
Six of these eight ladies were on-air personalities with their own programs, each of which emphasized “some particular subject of interest to housewives” according to a 1957 source.
Which of the original WHER names do you like best?
Loading ...(Dotty is usually a nickname for Dorothy, so I combined them in the poll.)
Vida Jane Butler, who joined WHER later in the ’50s, was known on-air as “Janie Joplin.” She’d been told that Vida “was considered too old-fashioned and too Southern for WHER,” and the data backs it up: the name Vida was indeed out of fashion and associated with the south at that time. These days, though, Vida is picking up steam — particularly in California. Janie, on the other hand, saw peak usage in the mid-20th century and has been in decline ever since.
Sources:
The U.S. National Park Service has a birthday coming up!
When the NPS was created on August 25, 1916, there were only 35 national parks and monuments. (The world’s first, Yellowstone, had been established in 1872.)
Nowadays the agency oversees 411 units. These units are located in the 50 states and beyond, and include national monuments (82), national historic sites (78), national parks (59), national historical parks (50), national memorials (30), national battlefields (11), national seashores (10), national lakeshores (4), national scenic trails (3), and more.
Let’s celebrate the upcoming centenary with over 100 baby names that pay tribute to the national parks specifically:
For all you national park lovers out there: What other park-inspired names can you come up with?
Sources: List of national parks of the United States – Wikipedia, History (U.S. National Park Service), NPS Site Designations (pdf), Kenai Fjords National Park Profile 2015 (pdf)
Image: Adapted from Zion National Park, Ranger Naturalist Service – LOC
Maize cytogeneticist Barbara McClintock was born on June 16, 1902, in Hartford, Connecticut.
She discovered transposons or “jumping genes” in the 1940s. For this discovery of mobile genetic elements, she won the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 1983, becoming the very first woman to receive an unshared Nobel Prize in that category.
She wasn’t born a “Barbara,” though. Her birth name was Eleanor.
Her parents changed her name because they thought “Eleanor” wasn’t a good fit to her personality:
By McClintock’s own account, her “capacity to be alone” began in the cradle: “My mother used to put a pillow on the floor and give me one toy and just leave me there. She said I didn’t cry, didn’t call for anything.” Her temperament, she says, led her parents to change her name when she was only four months old. Instead of Eleanor, a name they had originally chosen as especially feminine and delicate, they soon decided that “Barbara” would be more appropriate for a girl with such unusual fortitude. It sounded to them more masculine.
Barbara, the third of four children, had siblings named Marjorie, Mignon, and Malcolm.
Sources:
The ratio of Biblical names to non-Biblical names in the girl’s top 20 is about the same today as it was 100 years ago, though the ratio did change a bit mid-century.
(In contrast, there’s been a steady increase in the number of Biblical-origin names among the top boy names.)
Here’s the color-coded table — Biblical names are in the yellow cells, non-Biblical names are in the green cells, and several borderline names (which I counted as non-Biblical) are in the orange cells:
Again, feels pretty weird to put overtly Christian names like Christina and Christine in the non-Biblical category, but oh well.
Here are the year-by-year tallies:
| Year | Top 20 names given to… |
# Biblical | # Non-Biblical |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1914 | 31% of baby girls | 6 (30%) | 14 (70%) |
| 1924 | 31% of baby girls | 7 (35%) | 13 (65%) |
| 1934 | 32% of baby girls | 9 (45%) | 11 (55%) |
| 1944 | 35% of baby girls | 8 (40%) | 12 (60%) |
| 1954 | 34% of baby girls | 9 (45%) | 11 (55%) |
| 1964 | 24% of baby girls | 9 (45%) | 11 (55%) |
| 1974 | 24% of baby girls | 8 (40%) | 12 (60%) |
| 1984 | 26% of baby girls | 6 (30%) | 14 (70%) |
| 1994 | 19% of baby girls | 6 (30%) | 14 (70%) |
| 2004 | 14% of baby girls | 6 (30%) | 14 (70%) |
| 2014 | 12% of baby girls | 5 (25%) | 15 (75%) |
Just like with the boy names, though, there’s a big difference between the 1914 and 2014 sample sizes — 31% and 12%. So let’s also look at the 2014 top 100, which covers 31% of female births.
By my count, last year’s top 100 girl names were about a quarter Biblical, three-quarters non-Biblical:
| Biblical names (27) | Non-Biblical/Borderline names (73) |
|---|---|
| Isabella (via Elizabeth), Mia (via Maria), Abigail, Elizabeth, Chloe, Addison (via Adam), Lillian (via Elizabeth), Hannah, Anna, Leah, Gabriella, Sadie (via Sarah), Sarah, Annabelle, Madelyn (via Magdalene), Lucy (via Lucius), Alexa (via Alexander), Genesis, Naomi, Eva, Lydia, Julia, Khloe, Madeline (via Magdalene), Alexandra, Gianna (via Joanna), Isabelle (via Elizabeth) | Emma, Olivia, Sophia, Ava, Emily, Madison, Charlotte, Harper, Sofia, Avery, Amelia, Evelyn, Ella, Victoria, Aubrey, Grace, Zoey, Natalie, Brooklyn, Lily, Layla, Scarlett, Aria, Zoe, Samantha, Audrey, Ariana, Allison, Savannah, Arianna, Camila, Penelope, Claire, Aaliyah, Riley, Skylar, Nora, Hailey, Kaylee, Paisley, Kennedy, Ellie, Peyton, Caroline, Serenity, Aubree, Alexis, Nevaeh, Stella, Violet, Mackenzie, Bella, Autumn, Mila, Kylie, Maya, Piper, Alyssa, Taylor, Eleanor, Melanie, Faith, Katherine, Brianna, Ashley, Ruby, Sophie, London, Lauren, Alice, Vivian, Hadley, Jasmine |
Faith, Grace, Angela, Nevaeh, Natalie…all technically non-Biblical.
27%-73% is remarkably similar to both 25%-75% (smaller 2014 sample) and 30%-70% (1914 sample).
So here’s the question of the day: If you had to choose all of your children’s names from either one group or the other — Biblical names or non-Biblical names — which group would you stick to, and why?