How popular is the baby name Hugues 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 Hugues.

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Popularity of the baby name Hugues


Posts that mention the name Hugues

What popularized the baby name Celine in the 1990s?

Céline Dion's first English-language album, "Unison" (1990)
Céline Dion album

According to the U.S. baby name data, the name Celine saw a steep rise in the usage during the 1990s:

  • 1999: 394 baby girls named Celine [rank: 617th]
  • 1998: 565 baby girls named Celine [rank: 456th]
  • 1997: 443 baby girls named Celine [rank: 537th]
  • 1996: 271 baby girls named Celine [rank: 774th]
  • 1995: 231 baby girls named Celine [rank: 846th]
  • 1994: 247 baby girls named Celine [rank: 815th]
  • 1993: 157 baby girls named Celine
  • 1992: 121 baby girls named Celine
  • 1991: 77 baby girls named Celine
  • 1990: 52 baby girls named Celine
  • 1989: 43 baby girls named Celine

The name entered the top 1,000 in 1994, and even reached the top 500 (briefly) in 1998. That 1998 spike remained the name’s highest overall usage until the late 2010s.

Here’s a visual:

Graph of the usage of the baby name Celine in the U.S. since 1880
Usage of the baby name Celine

What was behind the rise?

Quebec-born singer Céline Dion, who became one of the dominant pop divas of the mid-to-late 1990s (along with Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey).

She’d been putting out French-language music in Canada for a decade before finally releasing her first English-language album, Unison, in 1990. The album featured the song “Where Does My Heart Beat Now,” which reached #4 on Billboard‘s Hot 100 chart in March of 1991.

This first English-language hit was followed by many more, including…

  • “Beauty and the Beast” (1991), a duet with Peabo Bryson
    • theme song from the 1991 Disney movie Beauty and the Beast
  • “If You Asked Me To” (1992)
  • “The Power of Love” (1993)
  • “Because You Loved Me” (1996)
    • theme song from the 1996 movie Up Close & Personal
  • “It’s All Coming Back to Me Now” (1996)
  • “All by Myself” (1996)
  • “My Heart Will Go On” (1997)
    • theme song from the 1997 movie Titanic

“My Heart Will Go On” was Céline Dion’s biggest hit, and today it’s considered her signature song. Here’s a live performance:

The 5-time Grammy winner was born in March of 1968 in the town of Charlemagne, a suburb of Montreal. Her parents, Adhémar and Thérèse Dion, had a total of fourteen children:

  1. Denise
  2. Clément
  3. Claudette
  4. Liette
  5. Michel
  6. Louise
  7. Jacques
  8. Daniel
  9. Ghislaine
  10. Linda
  11. Manon
  12. Paul (twin)
  13. Pauline (twin)
  14. Céline

Céline, the baby of the family, was more than two decades younger than her oldest sibling, Denise.

How did she come to be named Céline?

Her mother had chosen the name after hearing the song “Céline,” written by the French writer and singer-songwriter Hugues Aufray, who had had great success in Quebec and France during the time Céline’s mother was pregnant with her. “Céline” told the story of a good-hearted, well-behaved girl, the oldest of a large family, whose mother died giving birth to the youngest. The Céline of the song sacrificed her youth to care for her brothers and sisters, and the years had passed without her ever knowing the joys of love.

Hugues Aufray’s song “Céline” [vid] was released in 1966.

Quebec’s baby name data, which only goes back to 1980, doesn’t reveal whether or not the song made the name Céline trendy in Quebec in the late 1960s. But it does show the name declining in usage during the 1980s — despite the fact that a teenage Céline Dion was racking up French-language hits in Quebec throughout the decade.

The French name Céline can be traced back (via the Roman family names Caelinus and Caelius) to the Latin word caelum, which means “heaven.”

What are your thoughts on the name Céline?

Sources:

What would you name these two Frenchmen?

"Boulevard du Temple" (1838) by Louis Daguerre

The image above, of the Boulevard du Temple in Paris, was captured in early 1838 by Louis Daguerre, inventor of the daguerreotype.

It may be the earliest surviving photograph of a person. Two people, actually. Both are in the lower left.

Here’s a close-up:

Detail of "Boulevard du Temple" (1838) by Louis Daguerre

The standing man is getting his shoe shined, and the other man (partially obscured) is doing the shoe-shining.

Of all the people on the sidewalk that day, these were the only two to stay still long enough (about 10 minutes) to be captured in the image.

Now for the fun part!

What would you name these two Frenchmen?

Let’s pretend you’re writing a book set in Paris in the 1830s, and these are two of your characters. What names would you give them?

Here’s a long list of traditional French male names, to get you started:

Abel
Absolon
Achille
Adam
Adolphe
Adrien
Aimé
Alain
Alban
Albert
Alexandre
Alfred
Alphonse
Amaury
Amroise
Amédée
Anatole
André
Anselme
Antoine
Antonin
Apollinaire
Ariel
Aristide
Armand
Arnaud
Arsène
Arthur
Aubert
Aubin
Auguste
Augustin
Aurèle
Aurélien
Baptiste
Barnabé
Barthélémy
Basile
Bastien
Benjamin
Benoit
Bernard
Bertrand
Blaise
Boniface
Bruno
Calixte
Camille
Céleste
Célestin
Césaire
César
Charles
Christian
Christophe
Clair
Claude
Clément
Clovis
Constant
Constantin
Corentin
Corin
Corneille
Cosme
Cyril
Damien
Daniel
David
Denis
Déodat
Désiré
Didier
Dieudonné
Dimitri
Diodore
Dominique
Donat
Donatien
Edgar
Edgard
Edmé
Edmond
Édouard
Élie
Eloi
Émeric
Émile
Émilien
Emmanuel
Enzo
Éric
Ermenegilde
Ernest
Ethan
Étienne
Eugène
Eustache
Évariste
Évrard
Fabien
Fabrice
Félicien
Félix
Ferdinand
Fernand
Fiacre
Firmin
Florence
Florent
Florentin
Florian
Francis
François
Frédéric
Gabriel
Gaël
Gaëtan
Gaspard
Gaston
Gaubert
Geoffroy
Georges
Gérard
Géraud
Germain
Gervais
Ghislain
Gilbert
Gilles
Gratien
Grégoire
Guatier
Guillaume
Gustave
Guy
Hector
Henri
Herbert
Hercule
Hervé
Hilaire
Hippolyte
Honoré
Horace
Hubert
Hugues
Humbert
Hyacinthe
Ignace
Irénée
Isidore
Jacques
Jason
Jean
Jérémie
Jérôme
Joachim
Jocelyn
Joël
Jonathan
Joseph
Josse
Josué
Jourdain
Jules
Julien
Juste
Justin
Laurent
Laurentin
Lazare
Léandre
Léo
Léon
Léonard
Léonce
Léonide
Léopold
Lionel
Loïc
Lothaire
Louis
Loup
Luc
Lucas
Lucien
Lucrèce
Ludovic
Maël
Marc
Marcel
Marcellin
Marin
Marius
Martin
Mathieu
Mathis
Matthias
Maurice
Maxence
Maxime
Maximilien
Michaël
Michel
Modeste
Narcisse
Nathan
Nathanaël
Nazaire
Nicéphore
Nicodème
Nicolas
Noé
Noël
Norbert
Odilon
Olivier
Onésime
Pascal
Patrice
Paul
Philippe
Pierre
Placide
Pons
Prosper
Quentin
Rainier
Raoul
Raphaël
Raymond
Régis
Rémy
René
Reynaud
Richard
Robert
Roch
Rodolphe
Rodrigue
Roger
Roland
Romain
Rosaire
Ruben
Salomon
Samuel
Sébastien
Séraphin
Serge
Sévère
Séverin
Simon
Sylvain
Sylvestre
Télesphore
Théodore
Théophile
Thibault
Thierry
Thomas
Timothée
Toussaint
Urbain
Valentin
Valère
Valéry
Vespasien
Victor
Vincent
Vivien
Xavier
Yves
Zacharie

For some real-life inspiration, here are lists of famous 19th century and 20th century French people, courtesy of Wikipedia. Notice that many of the Frenchman have double-barreled, triple-barreled, even quadruple-barreled given names. (Daguerre himself was named Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre.)

Source: The First Photograph of a Human