How popular is the baby name Nanny 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 Nanny.

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Popularity of the baby name Nanny


Posts that mention the name Nanny

Will Alexa and Siri become “servant” names?

Amazon Echo Dot

Last month, Marion Times columnist Dan Brawner wrote an essay about the Alexa in which he asked: “Are we training a new generation to give orders to servants?”

It’s a good question. Lots of us make demands of AI assistants as if they’re servants. No need to be polite to technology, right?

But I’m curious how this might affect the names of the assistants. Looking at history, we can point to many female names that fell out of favor as soon as they became linked to lower class activities (e.g., servitude, prostitution). Examples include Abigail, Joan, Nan/Nanny, Jill, and Parnel.

Will society come to see AI assistant names like Alexa and Siri as “servant” names over time? If so, will this stigma influence baby names — maybe even long after the original devices/technology are gone?

Sources:

Image: Adapted from Echo Dot (3rd Gen) 03 by Samuel Wiki under CC0 1.0.

Should we redefine the name “Nancy”?

Most baby name books and websites define Nancy as “grace” or “favor.” Why? Because they call Nancy a form of Anne, and Anne is defined as “grace” or “favor.”

The more I learn about my own name, though, the more I question this assumption.

It’s true that Nancy has long been used as form of Anne. But it wasn’t originally used in this way.

Here’s the story.

In the Middle Ages, Annis was a common female name. It was a vernacular form of Agnes (which can be traced back to the ancient Greek word hagnos, meaning “pure, chaste”).

Phrases like “mine Annis” and “thine Annis” eventually gave rise to names like Nanse and Nansie.

Mine Annis, thine Annis, became my Nannis, my Nanse (Nance), thy Nannis, thy Nanse (Nance); and Nanse, Nance, Nanze, with the usual diminutiv, became Nansie, and speld Nancie, and now usually Nancy.

Then two things happened.

First, the name Annis fell into disuse. “With the disappearance of the form Annis, the connection of Nancy with Agnes was forgotten.”

Second, in the late 1600s, the names Nan and Nanny — very common diminutives of Anne — became slang for “prostitute.” In their place, parents began using Nancy.

[Interesting coincidence: Nan and Nanny were derived from phrases like “mine Anne” and “thine Anne,” much like the way Nancy was derived from Annis.]

So, as Nancy’s link to Agnes faded, its link with Anne grew stronger. As a result, people saw Nancy as a diminutive of Anne and defined it accordingly.

But is the definition correct? (Is there a such thing as a “correct” definition in cases like this?)

How would you define Nancy?

Sources:

  • American Philological Association. Transactions of the American Philological Association. Boston: Ginn & Company, 1892.
  • Hanks, Patrick, Kate Hardcastle and Flavia Hodges. A Dictionary of First Names. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006.

Update, 8/12/2020: Here are some extra tidbits about the name Nancy from the amateur genealogy website What’s in a Name:

  • “In Scotland Nancy has long been used synonymously with Agnes and one correspondent [EP] records this interchangeability in Salem, Massachusetts, USA towards the end of the 18th century.”
  • “A personal correspondent [JL3] has noted that the phonetic spelling of Florence in Yorkshire, England as Florance has given rise to the use of Nancy as a pet name for the latter variant.”

The fall of Nan & Nanny

Nancy was first used during the medieval era as a form of Agnes, but became popular during the 18th century as a form of Anne.

But it was used as a form of Anne only because the other forms of Anne — Nan and Nanny — had fallen into disuse.

Why were the once-common names Nan and Nanny shunned in the late 17th century? Because they, like several other once-common female names (e.g. Jill, Parnel), had become synonyms for “jade.” Nanny was even used in terms like nanny-house and nanny-shop, synonyms for “brothel.”

So babies stopped getting the names Nan and Nanny. But “[r]espectable people, still liking the name, changed it to Nancy, and in that form it still lives.”

Interesting, no?

Makes me wonder if Parnel (a short form of Petronilla) could have been resurrected with a nifty new ending. Parnelcy? Parncy? Hm.

Sources:

  • Bardsley, Charles Wareing Endell. Curiosities of Puritan Nomenclature. London: Chatto & Windus, 1897.
  • Green, Jonathon. Cassell’s Dictionary of Slang. 2nd ed. London: Cassell, 2006.