We haven’t done a baby name brainstorm in a long time! The last one we did was for coffee lovers, so let’s follow that up with one for tea lovers.
Here are some tea-inspired baby names for all the tea lovers out there:
Camellia
The Camellia sinensis plant is our primary source of tea. The genus was named by Carl Linnaeus in honor of Czech missionary and botanist Georg Joseph Kamel (1661-1706). Here’s the popularity graph for Camellia.
Catherine, Catarina
Portuguese princess Catherine of Braganza (originally Catarina de Bragança) popularized tea-drinking among the British nobility in the mid-1600s upon her marriage to England’s King Charles II in 1662. (Fun fact: The borough of Queens in New York City was named during Catherine’s tenure, so it was presumably named for her.) Here are the popularity graphs for Catherine and Catarina.
Thomas
Multiple people named Thomas are associated with the history of tea:
- Thomas Garway was the first person sell tea in London, in 1657.
- Thomas Twining founded Twinings of London in the early 1700s.
- Thomas Lipton founded Lipton Tea in the 1890s.
- Thomas Sullivan of New York inadvertently invented teabags in 1907 when he distributed tea samples in loosely woven silk bags — and people started using the bags to brew the tea.
Here’s the popularity graph for Thomas.
Robert, Fortune
Britain was obsessed with tea by the 1800s, but China controlled the tea trade. So in the late 1840s, the British East India Company sent Scottish botanist Robert Fortune to China to learn the secrets of Chinese tea production, and to smuggle tea plants and seedlings out of the country (and take them to India). Here are the popularity graphs for Robert and Fortune.
Chai
Chai is the word for “tea” in various languages. It’s also used to refer specifically to masala chai, a type of spiced tea that originated in India. Here’s the popularity graph for Chai.
Jasmine
Jasmine tea is a blend made with green tea and jasmine blossoms. Here’s the popularity graph for Jasmine.
Grey, Earl
Earl Grey tea is a blend made with black tea and oil of bergamot (a type of citrus fruit). It existed as far back as the 1880s and is thought to be named after former British Prime Minister Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey. Here are the popularity graphs for Earl and Grey.
Nanette
The famous song “Tea for Two” comes from the 1925 musical No, No, Nanette. It’s a duet sung during Act II by characters Nanette and Tom. Here’s the popularity graph for Nanette.
Dorotea, Mattea, Timotea, Teague (and others)
While these names aren’t strongly associated with the beverage, they do happen to feature the letter sequence “t-e-a.” Here are the popularity graphs for Dorotea, Mattea, Timotea, and Teague.
What other baby names with a tea association can you come up with?
Image: Adapted from Chai in Sakora by Dadhichbittu007 under CC BY-SA 4.0.
