How popular is the baby name Ketti 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 Ketti.

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Popularity of the baby name Ketti


Posts that mention the name Ketti

Baby name story: Boudleaux

Felice & Boudleaux Bryant album
Felice & Boudleaux Bryant album

Does the name “Boudleaux Bryant” ring a bell?

Boudleaux (pronounced bood-low) and his wife Felice were a very successful songwriting team active from the 1940s until the 1980s. Among their hits were several Everly Brothers songs, such as “Wake Up Little Susie.”

Where did Bouleaux’s unique name come from?

It was actually his middle name; he was born Diadorius Boudleaux Bryant in Georgia in 1920. His father fought in World War I, and at one point a French soldier named Boudleaux — or something similar — saved his life.

(I say “or something similar” because, doing records searches, I can only find a handful of people with the surname Boudleaux. Yet I see tens of thousands with the surname Boudreaux. So I wonder if the father either misheard the name or intentionally jazzed it up a bit.)

Boudleaux Bryant’s four siblings were sisters LaFontissee and Danise and brothers Neruda LeVigne and Jascha Mascagni.

Boudleaux’s wife/writing partner Felice was born with the name Matilda. She later adopted “Felice” because it was a pet name that Boudleaux had given to her.

(Playwright Ketti Frings also wrote under a husband-bestowed pet name.)

Sources:

What turned Dart into a baby name in 1956?

Part of the poster for "Foxfire" (1955)
Foxfire” poster

This one stumped me for a long time, but I think I’ve finally figured it out.

The word-name Dart debuted in the U.S. baby name data in the mid-1950s and hung around for several years before disappearing again:

  • 1961: unlisted
  • 1960: 6 baby boys named Dart
  • 1959: 5 baby boys named Dart
  • 1958: 8 baby boys named Dart
  • 1957: 10 baby boys named Dart
  • 1956: 12 baby boys named Dart [debut]
  • 1955: unlisted

At first I got stuck on a pair of auto-Darts: the Chrysler Dart, a concept car that was in the news briefly in mid-1956, and the Dodge Dart, a production car that went on sale in 1960. Neither one was a good answer.

Finally I happened to find a 1955 film called Foxfire that featured a main character named Jonathan “Dart” Dartland (played by Jeff Chandler). He was a half-Apache mining engineer whose new marriage to socialite wife Amanda (played by Jane Russell) was threatened by the cultural gap between them.

The screenplay, based on a 1950 novel of the same name by Anya Seton, was written by Ketti Frings.

What do you think of “Dart” as a baby name?

P.S. Foxfire was the film playing aboard the SS Andrea Doria the moment it was struck by the MS Stockholm.

Sources: Foxfire (1955 film) – Wikipedia, Foxfire (1955) – TCM

Where did the baby name Ketti come from in 1959?

ketti frings, look homeward angel

The name Ketti appeared for the first time in the U.S. baby name data in 1959:

  • 1961: unlisted
  • 1960: unlisted
  • 1959: 8 baby girls named Ketti [debut]
  • 1958: unlisted
  • 1957: unlisted

This was the year after writer Ketti Frings’ play Look Homeward, Angel, which ran on Broadway from 1957 to 1959, was nominated for multiple Tony Awards and won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.

The play, set in North Carolina in the mid-1910s, is an adaptation of the 1929 Thomas Wolfe novel of the same name:

Concentrating on the last third of Wolfe’s story, the play vividly portrays Eugene Gant, his mother, who is obsessed by her material holdings and who maintains barriers against the love of her family, his father, a stonecutter imprisoned by his failures, and the brother who never breaks away.

The author was born Katherine Hartley in Ohio in 1909. In 1938 she married German lightweight boxer Kurt Frings, who who gave her the nickname “Ketti.” (Kurt went on to become a Hollywood talent agent representing stars like Elizabeth Taylor, Audrey Hepburn, Lucille Ball, and Desi Arnaz.)

Do you like Ketti as a nickname for Katherine?

Sources: Ketti Frings, Stage and Film Writer – NYTimes.com, Look Homeward, Angel – Samuel French, Inc.

P.S. In 1962, a singer named Ketty Lester (born Revoyda Frierson) had a hit on the charts called “Love Letters,” but it doesn’t look like the song influenced the usage of the baby name Ketty.