How popular is the baby name Cindy 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 Cindy.

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Popularity of the baby name Cindy


Posts that mention the name Cindy

Where did the baby name Sindee come from in 1957?

Sindee Roberta Neilson, 1957, news
Baby Sindee Neilson, early 1957

In yesterday’s post, we talked about how the name Cindy was at peak trendiness in 1957.

But even that trendiness can’t quite explain the magnitude of the 1957 debut of Sindee, which tied with Maverick in terms of usage:

  • 1960: unlisted
  • 1959: 9 baby girls named Sindee
  • 1958: 9 baby girls named Sindee
  • 1957: 32 baby girls named Sindee [debut]
  • 1956: unlisted
  • 1955: unlisted

On-trend Sindee might have debuted that year anyway, but it wouldn’t have hit as high without the national news coverage of Sindee Roberta Neilson, born in January to Suzanne and Robert Neilson of Hartsdale, New York. Her birth was notable because it was Mrs. Neilson’s eighth caesarean section delivery — not technically a record at the time, but still a “very rare” occurrence.

Mrs. Neilson had a ninth C-section in 1959. Six of her nine babies lived past birth, but the only other names I could track down were Sherry and Suzanne (who is holding the camera in that photo).

What are your thoughts on the name Sindee? Do you like that spelling?

Sources:

  • Baby Makes History; Child Is Woman’s 8th Delivered by Caesarean Section.” New York Times 11 Jan. 1957: 13.
  • “After Her Eighth Caesarian.” Daily Banner [Greencastle, Indiana] 21 Jan. 1957: 3.
  • “Ninth Caesarean.” Daily Review [Decatur, Illinois] 17 Apr. 1959: 5.

What popularized the baby name Cindy in 1957?

Sheet music for "Cindy, Oh Cindy" (1956) by Eddie Fisher
“Cindy, Oh Cindy” sheet music

The name Cindy, which was already trendy in the 1950s, saw a sizeable increase in usage in 1956, followed by massive increase in usage in 1957:

  • 1958: 16,587 baby girls named Cindy [rank: 25th]
  • 1957: 20,269 baby girls named Cindy [rank: 19th] (peak usage)
  • 1956: 9,980 baby girls named Cindy [rank: 37th]
  • 1955: 5,591 baby girls named Cindy [rank: 79th]
  • 1954: 4,715 baby girls named Cindy [rank: 91st]
Graph of the usage of the baby name Cindy in the U.S. since 1880
Usage of the baby name Cindy

The spelling variants Cindie, Cindee, and Cindye also reached their highest-ever usage in 1957, as did the formal version of the name, Cynthia.

What caused the sharp rise in usage?

The catchy song “Cindy, Oh Cindy,” which was most popular at the end of 1956 and the start of 1957.

During the last two months of 1956, two different recordings of the song peaked on Billboard‘s “Top 100” chart (the precursor to the today’s “Hot 100” chart):

  • The Vince Martin version peaked at #12 (for three weeks)
  • The Eddie Fisher* version peaked at #10 (for two weeks)

Television audiences were also hearing the song: Perry Como sang it on his own show in November, and Vince Martin sang it on The Steve Allen Show in December.

What are your thoughts on the baby name Cindy? Would you use it?

Sources: SSA, Billboard

*Eddie Fisher’s wife, Debbie Reynolds, scored an even bigger hit with “Tammy” later the same year. (Their daughter, Carrie, went on to play Princess Leia in the Star Wars movies.)


P.S. No doubt the popularity of Cindy laid the groundwork for the debut of Cindylou in 1957, but I have to wonder if the character Cindy-Lou Who from the Dr. Seuss story How the Grinch Stole Christmas! (which was published simultaneously in Redbook magazine and as a standalone children’s book in December of 1957) didn’t lend a hand.

The character Cindy-Lou Who from Dr. Seuss book "How the Grinch Stole Christmas!" (1957).
Cindy-Lou Who

Incidentally, the Buddy Holly song “Peggy Sue” (1957) was originally called “Cindy Lou.”

Where did the baby name Peggysue come from in 1958?

Early rock and roll musician Buddy Holly (1936-1959)
Buddy Holly

In September of 1957, the classic rock and roll song “Peggy Sue” by Buddy Holly came out.

“Peggy Sue” was on Billboard‘s “Top 100” chart for 22 weeks from late 1957 to early 1958, reaching as high as the #3 spot.

Right on cue, the compound name Peggysue debuted in the U.S. baby name data in 1958:

  • 1960: unlisted
  • 1959: 6 baby girls named Peggysue
  • 1958: 7 baby girls named Peggysue [debut]
  • 1957: unlisted
  • 1956: unlisted

The name Peggy by itself also saw a significant increase in usage that year:

  • 1960: 6,434 baby girls named Peggy [rank: 69th]
  • 1959: 7,408 baby girls named Peggy [rank: 57th]
  • 1958: 10,072 baby girls named Peggy [rank: 42nd] (peak)
  • 1957: 7,379 baby girls named Peggy [rank: 62nd]
  • 1956: 7,487 baby girls named Peggy [rank: 63rd]

No doubt many of these Peggys had the middle name Sue.

So how did Buddy Holly chose the name “Peggy Sue” for the song? He didn’t — he wrote a song called “Cindy Lou,” taking the names from his newborn baby niece, Cindy Carol, and Cindy’s mom (Buddy’s sister) Patricia Lou.

But the original song wasn’t working out, so the band experimented with it in the summer of ’57. One of the changes they made was to the name. The rhythmically identical “Peggy Sue” was suggested by drummer Jerry Allison, who was dating a girl named Peggy Sue at the time.

At the end of 1958, Buddy Holly started working on “Peggy Sue Got Married,” one of rock and roll’s first sequel songs. Sadly he didn’t finish the song before February 3, 1959 — the day that he, Ritchie Valens, and The Big Bopper died in a plane crash in Clear Lake, Iowa.

If you were having a baby girl, and you had to name her either Peggy Sue or Cindy Lou, which combination would you choose?

P.S. “Peggy Sue” was released just a few months after the doo-wop song “Deserie,” which we talked about a few days ago.

Sources:

Image: Buddy Holly (Brunswick Records publicity photo)

[Latest update: Aug. 2023]

Could we maximize hurricane relief donations by choosing better names?

hurricane

In 2008, psychologists Jesse Chandler, Tiffany M. Griffin, and Nicholas Sorensen published a study showing that people who shared an initial with a hurricane name were over-represented among hurricane relief donors. So, for instance, people with R-names donated significantly more than other people to Hurricane Rita relief efforts. (This is an offshoot of the name-letter effect.)

A few years later, marketing professor Adam Alter came up with an interesting idea: Why not use this knowledge to try to maximize donations to hurricane relief efforts? He explained:

In the United States, for example, more than 10% of all males have names that begin with the letter J-names like James and John (the two most common male names), Joseph and Jose, Jason, and Jeffrey. Instead of beginning just one hurricane name with the letter J each year (in 2013, that name will be Jerry), the World Meteorological Organization could introduce several J names each year. Similarly, more American female names begin with M than any other letter — most of them Marys, Marias, Margarets, Michelles, and Melissas — so the Organization could introduce several more M names to each list.

I think his idea is a good one overall. It wouldn’t cost much to implement, but could potentially benefit many hurricane victims.

I would go about choosing the names differently, though.

Repeating initials multiple times within a single hurricane season would be unwise, for instance. It would cause confusion, which would undermine the reason we started naming hurricanes in the first place (“for people easily to understand and remember” them, according to the WMO).

But optimizing the name lists using data on real-life usage? That would be smart.

I might even try optimizing based on demographics. Baby boomers are particularly generous donors, so maybe we should choose letters (or even names) with that generation in mind?

The baby boomers were born from the mid-1940s to the mid-1960s, so here are the top initials for babies born in 1956 (60 years ago):

Top first letters of baby names, 1956, U.S.

Here are two possible lists of hurricane names using the above letters. I stuck with the WMO’s conventions: 21 names total, alternating genders, and no retired names.

Mid-century styleModern style
Janice
Danny
Rebecca
Martin
Cindy
Scott
Lori
Kenneth
Brenda
Patrick
Theresa
Gerald
Angela
Eugene
Wanda
Vincent
Nancy
Howard
Francine
Ira
Olga
Jasmine
Dominic
Rylee
Matthew
Charlotte
Sebastian
Lucy
Kingston
Bella
Preston
Trinity
Grayson
Ava
Eli
Willow
Victor
Nora
Hunter
Fiona
Isaac
Olivia

And here’s another point: we wouldn’t want to assign these names in order. While the official hurricane season lasts a full six months — June to November — most hurricane activity happens in August, September and October:

Atlantic Hurricane and Tropical Storm Activity (NOAA)

To really optimize, we’d want to reserve the top initials/names for the stronger mid-season hurricanes, which tend to do the most damage. So we could start the season using mid-list names, then jump to the top of the list when August comes around and go in order from that point forward (skipping over any mid-list names that had already been used).

What are your thoughts on assigning hurricane names with disaster relief in mind? Do you think it could work? What strategy/formula would you use to select relief-optimized hurricane names?

P.S. While J, D and R were the top initials 60 years ago, today’s top initials are A, J and M.

Sources:

Top image (Hurricane Elena) by NASA, second image by Nancy, third image (Atlantic Hurricane and Tropical Storm Activity) by NOAA