How popular is the baby name Bernarr 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 Bernarr.
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Hungarian sculptor Isidore Konti emigrated to the United States in the early 1890s. He became known for creating large-scale sculptures for international expositions, such as the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition and the 1904 Louisiana Purchase Exposition.
Konti had a “fatherly interest in the welfare of the young artists around him,” and,
…in 1908 and 1909, he hired a destitute young actor, Francis X. Bushman, to model and assist around the studio, later encouraging “Bushie” to travel with a performing company. Konti regularly sent Bushman’s young wife and children money to live on, as he did Bushman himself. Early in 1909, the Bushmans named their new baby daughter “Konti.”
Francis X. Bushman — who was named after the Catholic saint Francis Xavier — went on to become one of the biggest silent film stars of the 1910s. He was billed as “the Handsomest Man in the World” and known for his physique. (He was a Bernarr Macfadden follower.)
He and his wife Josephine had five children — Ralph, Josephine, Virginia, Lenore, and Bruce — and Lenore’s middle name was indeed Konti.
Lenore went on to appear in a handful of films during the 1920s and ’30s. (In the image above, she’s sitting beside John Wayne.)
Sources:
Davis, Lon and Debra Davis. King of the Movies: Francis X. Bushman. BearManor Media, 2009.
The Brighter Day was a moderately popular soap opera that ran on radio from 1948 to 1956 and on television from 1954 to 1962.
The show featured the Dennis family, which was headed by widowed father Rev. Richard Dennis. His five children were adult daughters Elizabeth (Liz) and Althea, adult son Grayling, and teenage daughters Patricia (Patsy) and Barbara (Babby).
At least four Brighter Day characters influenced U.S. baby names:
Grayling
In a 1949 article, Grayling Dennis was described as “restless, charming, spoiled. He writes poetry, plays the violin, has a long string of girl friends who adore his flashing eyes and his wonderful tennis, and drinks too much. But none of these activities has helped Gray, at twenty-three, to “find himself.””
The show was radio-only at that time — listeners would hear Grayling’s name, but never see it — so it’s not surprising that a slew of spelling variants ended up as boy names in the baby name data.
The name Grayling reached the top 1000 twice in the late ’50s, but all variants saw decreased usage after the TV show was canceled in the early ’60s.
Althea
Dramatic daughter Althea dramatically boosted the usage of the name Althea in the late 1940s:
1951: 334 baby girls named Althea (rank: 454th)
1950: 309 baby girls named Althea (rank: 462nd)
1949: 235 baby girls named Althea (rank: 545th)
1948: 126 baby girls named Althea (rank: 761st)
1947: 118 baby girls named Althea (rank: 803rd)
No doubt she was also behind the debut of the spelling Altheia in 1951.
Spring
In early 1951, Althea discovered she was pregnant. Althea was eager to become an movie actress, not a mother, and “regard[ed] the baby as an annoying interruption to her ambitions.” Regardless, she soon gave birth to a baby girl named Spring, and the baby name Spring debuted in the U.S. data the very same year:
1959: 34 baby girls named Spring
1958: 44 baby girls named Spring
1957: 77 baby girls named Spring
1956: 104 baby girls named Spring
1955: 41 baby girls named Spring
1954: 37 baby girls named Spring
1953: 27 baby girls named Spring
1952: 30 baby girls named Spring
1951: 7 baby girls named Spring [debut]
1950: unlisted
By July of 1952, Althea’s daughter Spring was already 4 years old (a victim of Soap Opera Rapid Aging Syndrome). I’m not sure how often Spring appeared in the show overall, but she may have been featured prominently in 1956, judging by the usage of the baby name that year.
Babby
In a 1954 article, Babby Dennis was described as “eager and impulsive.” She was the baby of the family, and her nickname was consistently spelled with a “y” to reflect this fact.
But TV audiences clearly preferred the spelling Babbie, which debuted in 1956 — years before Babby and Babbi finally showed up:
Girls named Babbie
Girls named Babby
Girls named Babbi
1963
.
.
.
1962
8
5
.
1961
18
9
.
1960
20
15
6
1959
19
5*
6*
1958
8
.
.
1958
8
.
.
1957
5
.
.
1956
10*
.
.
1955
.
.
.
*Debut
By 1959, Babby was a young adult and involved in a romance with a gangster named Peter Nino. (Despite being a gangster, Nino was popular with TV audiences: “Nino was to be killed off in six months, but fan mail gave him a reprieve.”)
Sources:
“Does Motherhood Change a Woman’s Life?” Radio Television Mirror Apr. 1951: 34-35.
P.S. Three of the sources above refer to a single magazine that went through a bunch of name changes over the course of its existence (1930s to 1970s). The publisher was Macfadden, founded by Bernarr Macfadden, who knew a bit about name changes himself…
The names Dorcasina, Malaeska, and Trilby were inspired by characters from 19th-century novels. Altruria also comes from a 19th-century novel, but not from a character.
The story A Traveler from Altruria by W. D. (William Dean) Howells was first published in installments in Cosmopolitan magazine from November 1892 to October 1893. It was published as standalone book in 1894.
The story’s protagonist is Aristides Homos, a visitor to America from the fictional island of Altruria, “a Utopian world that combined the foundations of Christianity and the U.S. Constitution to produce an “ethical socialism” by which society was guided.”
The fictional place-name Altruria is a play on the word “altruism,” which was coined relatively recently (circa 1830) by French philosopher Auguste Comte.
Though A Traveler from Altruria isn’t well-remembered today, it was influential during the 1890s. Altrurian Clubs started sprouting up across the country. A short-lived commune called Altruria was established in Sonoma County, California, in the mid-1890s. And at least two babies were given the (middle) name Altruria:
Carrie Altruria Evans, born in 1900 in Van Wert, Ohio
Lester Altruria Eby, born in 1895 in Des Moines, Iowa
The official history book of the Van Wert Altrurian Club even mentions Carrie by name:
What do you think of Altruria as a baby name? Do you think it could be an alternative to the fast-rising Aurora (which broke into the top 100 last year)?
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