How popular is the baby name Heather in the United States right now? How popular was it historically? Find out using the graph below! Plus, check out all the blog posts that mention the name Heather.
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Here are the most distinctively Canadian first names by decade, according to Canadian website The 10 and 3:
2010s: Zainab and Linden
2000s: Gurleen and Callum
1990s: Simran and Mathieu
1980s: Chantelle and Darcy
1970s: Josee and Stephane
1960s: Giuseppina and Luc
1950s: Heather and Giuseppe
1940s: Heather and Lorne
1930s: Isobel and Lorne
1920s: Gwendoline and Lorne
Did you know that Canada’s love of “Lorne” comes from the Marquess of Lorne, the British nobleman who served as Governor General of Canada from 1878 to 1883? To see more explanations, and also more names per decade, check out the source article.
The name I’m most curious about is Josée from the 1970s. It had a “Canadian factor” of 634.6 — larger than any other name in the study — but also had no explanation, and I can’t figure out the influence. Does anyone have a guess?
Soava GalloneOn the hunt for a rare girl name with a retro feel?
Here’s a big batch of uncommon female S-names that are associated in some way with early cinema (i.e., each is either a character name or an actress name).
For those that have had enough usage to appear in the national data, I’ve included links to popularity graphs.
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Saba
Saba Raleigh was an actress who appeared in films from the 1910s to the 1920s. She was born in England in 1867. Her birth name was Isabel Pauline Ellissen. Saba was also a character played by actress Myrta Bonillas in the film The Claw (1927).
Sabra Sabra de Shon was an actress who appeared in one film in 1915. She was born in Massachusetts in 1850. Sabra was also a character name in multiple films, including Cimarron (1931) and A Man Betrayed (1941).
Salka
Salka Steuermann was an actress who appeared in films from the 1910s to the 1920s. She was born in Austria-Hungary (now Ukraine) in 1889. Her birth name was Salomea Steuermann.
Sallie
Sallie McPherson was a character played by actress Wanda Hawley in the film Double Speed (1920).
Salomy
Salomy was a character name in multiple films, including Salomy Jane (1914) and Wild Girl (1932).
Salti
Salti was a character played by actress Beatie Olna Travers in the film A Romance of Old Baghdad (1922).
Samanthy
Samanthy was a character name in multiple films, including The Uneven Balance (short, 1914) and The Lonesome Heart (1915).
Samaran
Samaran was a character played by actress Julia Faye in the film Fool’s Paradise (1921).
Sanchia
Sanchia Percival was a character played by actress Dorinea Shirley in the film Open Country (1922).
Sari
Sari Maritza (SHA-ree MAR-ee-tsa) was an actress who appeared in films in the 1930s. She was born in China in 1910. Her birth name was Patricia Detering-Nathan. Sari was also a character name in multiple films, including The Virgin of Stamboul (1920) and The Stolen Bride (1927).
Shireen
Shireen was the name two characters — a mother and a daughter played by actresses Virginia Brown Faire and Patsy Ruth Miller, respectively — in the film Omar the Tentmaker (1922).
Usage of the baby name Shireen (which debuted in the data the year after Omar the Tentmaker came out).
Shirlene
Shirlene May was a character played by actress Gale Robbins in the film The Barkleys of Broadway (1949).
Sigrid
Sigrid Holmquist was an actress who appeared in films in the 1920s. She was born in Sweden in 1899. Sigrid was also a character name in multiple films, including Transatlantic (1931) and I Remember Mama (1948).
Soava
Soava Gallone was an actress who appeared in films from the 1910s to the 1930s. She was born in Poland in 1880. Her birth name was Stanislawa Winawerowna.
Sofonisba
Sofonisba was a character played by actress Italia Almirante-Manzini in the film Cabiria (1914).
Soledad
Soledad Jiménez was an actress who appeared in films from the 1920s to the 1950s. She was born in Spain in 1874.
Sookey
Sookey was a character played by actress Heather Angel in the film Self Made Lady (1932).
Sophronia
Sophronia was a character played by actress Bessie Eyton in the film Lend Me Your Name (1918). It was also a character (nicknamed Phronsie) in the Little Peppers films of the early ’40s.
Stacia
Stacia de Napierkowska was an actress who appeared in films from the 1900s to the 1920s. She was born in France in 1886. Her birth name was Renée Claire Angèle Élisabeth Napierkowski.
Stascha
Stascha was a character played by actress Marlene Dietrich in the film Three Loves (1929).
Steena
Steena Iverson was a character played by actress Dot Farley in the short film Mrs. Gay Life’s Visitors (1911).
Steenie
Steenie was a character played by actress Dorothy Kelly in the short film Rip Van Winkle (1912).
Steffi
Steffi Duna was an actress who appeared in films from the 1930s to the 1940s. She was born in Hungary in 1910. Her birth name was Stephanie Berindy.
Sul-Te-Wan
Madame Sul-Te-Wan was an actress who appeared in films from the 1910s to the 1950s. She was born in Kentucky in 1873. Her birth name was Nellie Conley.
Sumurun
Sumurun was a character played by actress Jenny Hasselquist in the film Sumurun (1920).
Sunbeam
Sunbeam was a character played in multiple films, including The Sunbeam (short, 1912) and The Coming of Sunbeam (short, 1913).
Sunday
Sunday Wilshin was an actress who appeared in films from the 1920s to the 1930s. She was born in England in 1905. Her birth name was Sundae Mary Aline Horne-Wilshin.
Sunnie
Sunnie O’Dea was an actress who appeared in films from the 1930s to the 1940s. She was born in Pennsylvania in 1918. Her birth name was Martha Bonini.
Horseflies are fierce. Like mosquitoes, they require a blood meal before they can reproduce. But even for a horsefly, this one was special. Bryan Lessard first spotted her in the Australian National Insect Collection. As soon as he laid his eyes on her round, golden abdomen, draped in two translucent, honey-colored wings, he knew: “I figured, if I’m ever going to name a species after Beyoncé, this is it.”
Until then, it had been known to locals as the “golden bum fly” but had not been described scientifically. No longer. In 2011, the artist-formerly-known-as-golden-bum-fly officially got her new taxonomic name: Scaptia beyonceae. With this moniker, Lessard hoped, she “would become an ambassador for bootylicious biodiversity.”
Her crusade to include men’s names when meteorologists differentiated hurricanes placed her at the eye of an international storm.
[…]
Following a long naval tradition of giving storms women’s names, just as ships are referred to by female pronouns, government forecasters adopted the practice in 1953 and applied it alphabetically.
Soon, weathermen — and they were mostly men — were applying sexist clichés to the storms, like suggesting that they were unpredictable or “temperamental” and were “flirting” with barrier islands or coastlines.
[…]
But a generation after Ms. Bolton began her campaign, the weathermen finally capitulated.
My sister’s name is September, and today is her 32nd birthday. Yes, that’s right. My parents named my sister September even though she was born in January, and she has consequently suffered years of obvious questions. Of course, these are the same people who named their only son Ranger.
Gal’s first name is pretty much pronounced how it’s written (think “gal pal”). You’ve also probably found yourself pronouncing her last name as “Guh-dough” or “Gah-dot” thinking you’ve got it all down, but sorry to disappoint you: both of those are wrong. … During her interview with Jimmy Kimmel, Gal explained that the correct way to pronounce her last name is “Gah-dote.” Say it with me: “Gah-dote.” Gadot means river bank, while Gal means wave in Israeli.
From Nina Sankovitch’s memoir Tolstoy and the Purple Chair (2011):
For my father, the consequences of war brought him far from home, and eventually across an ocean, to start over in a new world. My parents tell me I was named after the members of the corps de ballet of the Bolshoi, most of whom were named Nina. They went to see a performance of the Bolshoi just days before I was born. But I also know that my name is another ripple effect of the war, coming from my father’s sister Antonina, who was murdered that night in 1943.
(Three of her father’s siblings — Sergei, Antonina, and Boris — were all killed one night during WWII.)
Adelman and his colleagues came up with a new naming convention that incorporates the mom’s first name. Instead of Babygirl Hobson, my daughter would instead be tagged as Katherinesgirl Hobson. Twins would be called 1Katherinesgirl and 2Katherinesgirl, rather than the conventional BabygirlA and BabygirlB. (Another system using temporary names like CutiePie and BuggyBear was rejected, says Adelman.)
Mark begins her classes by telling the story behind her name. “For just a few moments after I was born, [my parents] thought that Marsha Mark was a really nice name. But a couple of hours passed and then they said, ‘No wait, it’s a terrible name!’ and they went to try and change it, but the folks at the hospital said, ‘No, sorry, you signed the papers, so that’s the name,'” Mark recounted. “To my mind, the name Marsha either belongs to a sister in The Brady Bunch or to someone who wears, maybe, pink ruffles. And neither of those applies to me. So, I’ve been called M my whole life, and I’m happy with it.”
Have you spotted any good name-related quotes/articles lately? Let me know!
Nature is waking up again! Let’s celebrate by checking out which nature names are the most popular for baby girls right now. Ironically the top 50 list below includes all the seasons except for “Spring,” but it does feature lots of springtime things: flowers, birds, trees…
For this list I stuck to names that are also correctly spelled English words. This means that I skipped names that are non-English words (like Stella and Luna) and alternative spellings of words (like Brooke and Briar). I should also mention that several of the above (including Rowan, Robin, and Clementine) do have more than one etymology to choose from.
Dido’s duet with Eminem…”Stan,” [was] a collaboration which she never imagined fans would connect to her son’s moniker.
“Stanley was actually our favorite name, coincidentally both of our favorite names. He could never have been called anything else to be honest,” Dido shares. “I’m so stupid, I didn’t think anyone would make the connection.”
Proud of her choice, Dido jokes the name game in her family is always a fun affair. “It’s fine,” she says of her final decision. “I was named after a crazy queen who threw herself on a fire.”
I’m 26 years old and I can probably count on two hands the number of times a person has gotten the pronunciation of my name right on the first go — a surprising minority, considering it has the word “less” right in it. Whenever someone does get it right, my jaw drops, because these moments are few and very far between — I often consider hugging the person for making me feel so normal. But the other 99 percent of the time, people get my name wrong.
The beginning of this capital story [The Opened Shutters] was not with Tide Mill, however, but with the name Thinkright Johnson. Like certain persons whose appearance before Mrs. Burnham’s mind’s eye has compelled her to write about them, this New Englandish appellation gave birth to a book. Thinkright Johnson–Thinkright Johnson; the name haunted Mrs. Burnham for days and weeks, “till I knew that the only way I could have any peace was to write something about him.”
Clara is my 2-year-old Wheaten terrier and one of several dogs in my neighborhood with a name that sounds as if it came from a shuffleboard tournament on a golden-years cruise. Among her pals, Fern is red-nose pit bull, Alfie is (mostly) a black lab and Eleanor is a mix of Bernese mountain dog and poodle.
This pack has led me to conclude that whereas we look back to remote centuries when giving children trendy names like Emma, Sebastian, Julian or Charlotte, we name our dogs after our grandparents.
[…]
This means that future generations of dogs should be prepared to be called the mom-and-dad names of today. Names like Kimberly, Jason and Heather.
The country nowadays is full of children burdened with grotesque names. Are we to ban them? If you forbid Cyanide, should you permit Chardonnay? A further complication is that the little girl is a twin, and her mother wanted to call her twin brother Preacher. This too Lady Justice King forbade because, although Preacher ‘might not be an objectionable name’, ‘there was considerable benefit for the boy twin to be in the same position as his sister’ and for both to be named, as was proposed, by their half-siblings. We are not told what names the half-siblings want. I do hope it is something kind and simple, like Jack and Jill.
Rachida Dati reacted angrily after journalist Eric Zemmour criticised her choice of name for seven-year-old daughter Zohra.
He said it was unpatriotic because it did not come from an official list of French Christian names.
[…]
He added: “I consider that by giving Muslim first names, you are refusing to accept the history of France.”
[…]
“Do you find it scandalous to give your mother’s name to your children?” [Rachita Dati] asked, in a vigorous defence of her choice of name.
“I loved my mother. I have a little girl, and I called her after my mother. Like millions of French people do every day.”
From the 2013 book The Lahu Minority in Southwest China: A Response to Ethnic Marginalization on the Frontier by Jianxiong Ma:
When a baby is born, his or her name is decided by the birthday tiled by the twelve zodiac days together with gender, so he or she will normally be named Za Birthday for male or Na Birthday for female. For example, if two babies were born on the rat day (fa ni) and the ox day (nu ni) respectively, if they are boys, their names should be Zafa and Zanu, but if they are girls, their names should be Nafa and Nanu, and so on. […] In general, there are about 45 names that can be used in the village for individual persons, even though the very basic names total 24, twelve days for both male and female members.
(The extra baby names used by the Lahu are essentially replacement names used in case of childhood sickness. These replacement names also follow specific formulas.)
