How popular is the baby name Milton 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 Milton.
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Taffy isn’t just a type of candy — it’s also a name, and it debuted in the U.S. baby name data in 1943:
1947: 12 baby girls named Taffy
1946: 6 baby girls named Taffy
1945: unlisted
1944: 5 baby girls named Taffy
1943: 6 baby girls named Taffy [debut]
1942: unlisted
1941: unlisted
Why?
Because of Taffy Tucker, a new character introduced in the Terry and the Pirates comic strip during 1942.
Titular character Terry Lee joined the military in 1942, and there he met new people, including Taffy Tucker, an Army nurse, and Flip Corkin, an Army flight instructor (who was also Taffy’s boyfriend).
Taffy Tucker was a “spunky, dedicated nurse, hardworking and tireless, cheerful and caring and always feminine.”
At one point in the storyline, Taffy was kidnapped by a Japanese agent. She was beaten and left for dead in the interior of China. Thankfully, she was eventually rescued by Terry and Flip.
It took cartoonist Milton Caniff about three months to create the character:
[He] spent several days just worrying about a name for Taffy. Since he visualized her as a pert, snub-nosed girl from Georgia, he wanted a name with a typically Old South sound. He finally settled on Guinevere Marianne Tucker, nicknamed Taffy because of her candy-colored hair. She had to be short, because she was scheduled to fall in love with Flip Corkin, who is short, and she had to be blond [sic] for contrast with Flip, who is dark.
Caniff had modeled Taffy after a photo of real-life WWII military nurse Bernice Taylor of Kansas.
What do you think of Taffy as a baby name?
P.S. The name Taffy got a slight boost around 1949 thanks to the film The Doctor and the Girl, in which the young Dr. Corday has a love interest named Evelyn “Taffy” Heldon who operates a taffy machine in a candy store.
P.P.S. Other Terry and the Pirates-inspired baby names include Normandie, Merrily, and Raven.
Harvey, Robert C. Meanwhile…: A Biography of Milton Caniff, Creator of Terry and the Pirates and Steve Canyon. Seattle: Fantagraphics Books, 2007.
Bainbridge, John. “Significant Sig and the Funnies: Milton Caniff.” Milton Caniff: Conversations. Ed. Robert C. Harvey. Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2002.
The name Raven has been given to babies of both genders for decades, but I find its female usage particularly interesting because girl-name Raven has gotten three distinct boosts from popular culture so far.
The first boost happened in 1941, when Raven debuted as a girl name in the data. (It had already popped up a few times as a boy name.)
Girls named Raven
Boys named Raven
1943
5
7
1942
5
5
1941
6*
.
1940
.
.
*Debut
In October of that year, in the comic strip Terry and the Pirates by Milton Caniff, a female character named Raven Sherman died in a dramatic and memorable sequence.
Raven, “a WASP clearly modeled on Katharine Hepburn” according to one source, was an American heiress who was working at a camp for war refugees in China. She was pushed off a moving truck, died of her injuries, and was buried on an isolated Chinese hillside. “Caniff was flooded with flower deliveries, mock memorial services, petitions of condolence signed by disparate groups as factory workers and entire colleges, as well as a lot of irate letters.”
The second pop culture boost happened in the 1970s:
Girls named Raven
Boys named Raven
1978
342 [rank: 533rd]
25
1977
299 [rank: 579th]
20
1976
100
10
1975
17
9
1974
15
12
In 1976, the soap opera The Edge of Night introduced a female character named Raven Swift (first played by Juanin Clay, then played by Sharon Gabet). She was described as “the show’s delightful young vixen-heroine” in The Soap Opera Encyclopedia. The character remained on the show until it was canceled in 1984.
And the most recent (and biggest) pop culture boost happened in the early 1990s:
Girls named Raven
Boys named Raven
1992
2,016 [rank: 152nd]
89
1991
2,026 [rank: 150th]
53
1990
1,758 [rank: 166th]
62
1989
476 [rank: 495th]
27
1988
327 [rank: 612th]
19
It went on to peak at 139th in 1993.
The reason? Actress Raven-Symoné, who first found fame as a four year old when she started playing Olivia (Denise’s step-daughter) on the The Cosby Show in 1989. The compound name Ravensymone debuted in the data in 1990, and the spelling variant Ravensimone followed in 1991. (Her Disney Channel show That’s So Raven didn’t come along until much later.)
What are your thoughts on the name Raven? Would you use it?
Sources:
Hamill, Pete. “Milton Caniff.” Masters of American Comics, edited by John Carlin, New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005, pp. 229-237.
If you’re on the hunt for baby names with a numerological value of 2, you’re in luck! Because today’s post features hundreds of 2-names.
Before we get to the names, though — how do we know that they’re “twos” in numerology?
Turning names into numbers
Here’s how to calculate the numerological value of a name.
First, for each letter, come up with a number to represent that letter’s position in the alphabet. (Letter A would be number 1, letter B would be number 2, and so forth.) Then, add all the numbers together. If the sum has two or more digits, add the digits together recursively until the result is a single digit. That single digit is the name’s numerological value.
For instance, the letters in the name Aurora correspond to the numbers 1, 21, 18, 15, 18, and 1. The sum of these numbers is 74. The digits of 74 added together equal 11, and the digits of 11 added together equal 2 — the numerological value of Aurora.
Baby names with a value of 2
Below you’ll find the most popular 2-names per gender, according to the latest U.S. baby name data. I’ve further sub-categorized them by total sums — just in case any of those larger numbers are significant to anyone.
2 via 11
The letters in the following baby names add up to 11, which reduces to two (1+1=2).
Girl names (2 via 11)
Boy names (2 via 11)
Adea, Fe, Aia
Aj, Ja, Cabe
2 via 20
The letters in the following baby names add up to 20, which reduces to two (2+0=2).
There’s no definitive answer, unfortunately, because various numerological systems exist, and each one has its own interpretation of the number two. That said, if we look at a couple of modern numerology/astrology websites, we see 2 being described as “diplomatic,” “cooperative,” “peaceful,” “gentle,” and “understanding.”
We can also look at associations, which are a bit more concrete. Here are some things that are associated with the number 2:
Hands
Feet
Eyes
Ears
Lungs
Chopsticks
Knitting needles
Complementary pairings (e.g., pen and paper, bow and arrow, peanut butter and jelly)
Dualities (e.g., day and night, yin and yang, war and peace)
Boxing (2 competitors; 2 fists)
Partner dancing
DNA double helix
What does the number 2 mean to you? What are your strongest associations with the number?
P.S. To see names with other numerological values, check out the posts for the numbers one, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, and nine.
“Everly” is hot…”Beverly” is not. It’s a one-letter difference between fashionable and fusty.
If you’re sensitive to style, you’ll prefer Everly. It fits with today’s trends far better than Beverly does.
But if you’re someone who isn’t concerned about style, or prefers to go against style, then you may not automatically go for Everly. In fact, you may be more attracted to Beverly because it’s the choice that most modern parents would avoid.
If you’ve ever thought about intentionally giving your baby a dated name (like Debbie, Grover, Marcia, or Vernon) for the sake of uniqueness within his/her peer group — if you have no problem sacrificing style for distinctiveness — then this list is for you.
Years ago, the concept of “contrarian” baby names came up in the comments of a post about Lois. Ever since then, creating a collection of uncool/contrarian baby names has been on my to-do list.
Finally, last month, I experimented with various formulas for pulling unstylish baby names out of the SSA dataset. Keeping the great-grandparent rule in mind, I aimed for names that would have been fashionable among the grandparents of today’s babies. The names below are the best results I got.
Interestingly, thirteen of the names above — Bobbie, Cary, Dale, Jackie, Jimmie, Jody, Kerry, Kim, Lynn, Robin, Sandy, Tracey, Tracy — managed to make both lists.
Now some questions for you…
Do you like any of these names? Would you be willing to use any of them on a modern-day baby? Why or why not?
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