How popular is the baby name Pleshette 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 Pleshette.
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It’s almost Halloween! So let’s look at the curious girl name Loey, which debuted in the U.S. baby name data at the start of the ’70s:
1972: unlisted
1971: unlisted
1970: 11 baby girls named Loey [debut]
1969: unlisted
1968: unlisted
What put it there?
A character from the TV horror movie Ritual of Evil, which premiered in February of 1970. It was a sequel to the 1969 TV movie Fear No Evil, and so it featured the same main character: psychiatrist David Sorrell.
In Ritual of Evil, Dr. Sorrell investigated the death of one of his patients, a young heiress. Turns out she was killed by a Satanic cult, and her little sister Loey (played by Belinda Montgomery) was now in danger as well.
In the film, the name “Loey” was pronounced to rhyme with Chloe and Zoe.
Halloween is a few days away, so here’s a pair of horror-imbued baby names, each of which got a boost from the same scary film.
That film was The Ring, released in October of 2002. The film’s main character was a journalist dealing with a cursed videotape (that killed anyone who watched it). But the film’s memorable character — as in all good horror films — was the villain: the vengeful spirit of a little girl named Samara (pronounced sah-MAHR-ah) Morgan. Samara was played by young actress Daveigh (pronounced dah-VAY) Chase.
The year after The Ring came out, the name Samara saw a steep rise in usage, and the name Daveigh debuted in the U.S. data:
Girls named Samara
Girls named Daveigh
2005
825 (rank: 380th)
12
2004
857 (rank: 365th)
21
2003
656 (rank: 456th)
22*
2002
242 (rank: 929th)
.
2001
261 (rank: 883rd)
.
*Debut & Peak usage
The Ring did well at the box office, and it was followed by two successful sequels: The Ring Two (released in March of 2005) and Rings (February of 2017).
Daveigh Chase was not actively involved in either sequel, so her name didn’t see any subsequent boosts in the data. But Samara Morgan was central to both films (of course) and we can see the corresponding peaks in the usage of “Samara” in 2006 and 2018:
(The rise that began in 2016 may have been kicked off by Australian actress Samara Weaving, who was being called a “newcomer” in Hollywood around that time.)
The Ring was a remake of the 1998 Japanese film Ringu, which was based on the 1991 Japanese novel Ringu by Koji Suzuki. In the novel and the original film, the little girl was named Sadako Yamamura. I couldn’t find any information on why the American version of the character was renamed “Samara” specifically, but my guess is that “Samara” was chosen simply because it was a 3-syllable S-name like Sadako.
What are your thoughts on the name Samara? Would you use it (despite the horrific association)?
Last month, HBO aired an original movie called The Girl. I didn’t see it, but the reviews tell me it was about the relationship between director Alfred Hitchcock and actress Nathalie Kay “Tippi” Hedren, who starred in two of Hitchcock’s movies: The Birds (1963) and Marnie (1964).
And that reminded me — both of these Hitchcock films had an effect on baby names in the 1960s.
The Birds inspired two SSA debuts: Tippi and Pleshette (from the surname of fellow Birds actress Suzanne Pleshette).
Tippi was off the list again by the mid-1970s, and Pleshette hung on until the late 1980s.
The psychological thriller Marnie wasn’t behind any debuts, but it did make the name Marnie trendy for several years:
1968: 446 baby girls named Marnie [rank: 456th]
1967: 252 baby girls named Marnie [rank: 600th]
1966: 245 baby girls named Marnie [rank: 606th]
1965: 267 baby girls named Marnie [rank: 584th]
1964: 112 baby girls named Marnie
1963: 38 baby girls named Marnie
1962: 30 baby girls named Marnie
Marnie saw peak usage in 1969, but was out of the top 1,000 again by 1978. In 2011, just 16 baby girls were named Marnie.
Which of these three names do you like best: Tippi, Pleshette, or Marnie?
Source: SSA
Image: Screenshot of The Birds
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