How popular is the baby name Sue in the United States right now? How popular was it historically? Find out using the graph below! Plus, check out all the blog posts that mention the name Sue.
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From the book My Story of Embracing Purpose, Healing, and Hope (2019) by Queer Eye co-star Karamo Brown:
“When we were preparing to shoot season 1, a curious crew member asked Tan why he didn’t go by his birth name. Tan replied, “Because when you google ‘Tanveer,’ only terrorists come up. It’s easier.” Now, I love Tan — and I know he is not ashamed of his Muslim or Pakastani heritage. […] I said, “Listen, you can be the one to change the public perception and image associated with your name. If our show is a success, when people google ‘Tanveer,’ they’ll see your positive image. It’s going to be someone who’s doing good in the world. Think of all the little boys who are feeling the same way you feel and how you can inspired them to have pride in their name.”
(Elsewhere in the book he talks about his own first and middle names, Karamo and Karega, which mean “educated” and “rebel” in Swahili.)
“My slimming club leader has been calling me Guinea – yes, as in guinea pig – for months now.
[…]
“It’s embarrassing and very awkward. I’ve often considered changing my first name so at least one of my names will not confuse people.
“I hold a fairly senior position but it’s hard to make a good first impression when people ask your name several times – usually with socially awkward laughter!”
Sigourney Weaver (born Susan Weaver) talks about her name in an interview with Esquire magazine:
I changed my name when I was about twelve because I didn’t like being called Sue or Susie. I felt I needed a longer name because I was so tall. So what happened? Now everyone calls me Sig or Siggy.
(In another interview, Signourney mentioned that she was nearly named Flavia.)
From a writer who regrets giving his son the middle name Flip:
In hindsight, I wish I’d given my son something a little more ordinary, that didn’t stand out quite so much. Or perhaps not given him a middle name. And sure, I could change it, but I doubt I will go that far. Maybe he will learn to love it. Maybe he will change it on his own someday. I don’t know.
For the most part, he doesn’t really notice his middle name and I’m grateful for that. But when it does come up, I do regret it.
A short item printed a century ago in a short-lived Chicago newspaper (The Day Book, 4 Feb., 1915, page 20):
The tango craze has reached another high notch, a new community in West Virginia being named Tango. Curiously enough there is not a resident who is familiar with the dance.
How Kamiyah Mobley — who was kidnapped at birth and raised under the name Alexis Manigo — deals with having two different names:
“My name tag at my job says Alexis. Kamiyah Mobley is on my paperwork. That’s who gets paid,” she said. “People that know me, call me Alexis. If you know me by Kamiyah – call me Kamiyah. I go by both.”
My daughter’s name is Meadow Brooke. I was raised in Merrick, right off of the Meadowbrook Parkway, and my husband loved ‘The Sopranos’ (Meadow was the Sopranos’ daughter in the series). So we named our daughter after the show and the parkway I’ve driven my entire life. Her name means so much to us and only people in New York would understand the meaning behind it.
(The Sopranos began airing in early 1999. Usage of the name Meadow more than doubled that year, then more than tripled the next year. By 2001 it was in the top 1,000, and it’s been there ever since.)
But like juice cleanses and shower sex, it turns out that naming a human might be more fun in theory than reality. Some people even get more into it after taking the pressure of parenthood out of the equation altogether. Seven years into her marriage, Amanda, 31, said she and her husband are “one hundred percent” sure they won’t have kids, but still chat about their top names. “It’s like online window shopping and then closing out all your tabs before you buy,” she quips.
So, who is Kairi? According to her parents, the 15-month-old loves to play hide and seek and build forts with blankets. She has a spunky attitude and vibrant facial expressions. And she was named after a character from the video game Kingdom Hearts.
(According to Gerber, Kairi’s mother Ying went by “Kairi” as a nickname during high school.)
Finally, two quotes about the name of the latest royal baby, Archie. The first is from CNN:
Archie is an approachable, nicknamey, old-school sort of name. Guys like Archie don’t usually live in a palace. Archie is the buddy you go bowling with.
The royals aren’t known for being wild. A crazy day at Buckingham Palace is when a corgi goes rogue and barks at a pigeon. So when Prince Harry and Meghan Markle name their first born Archie Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor, that’s the royal equivalent of doing a line of cocaine in church.
“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?
From the 1900 book Glimpses of Sunshine and Shade in the Far North (which described Klondike Gold Rush stampeders camping at Lake Lindeman in British Columbia) by Lulu Alice Craig:
“[W]e wandered through this little city of tents of twelve to fifteen thousand people, finding interest in reading the names on the tents which represented many if not all parts of the world.”
(This quote was on display at the NPS museum in Skagway, Alaska.)
With a first name as iconic as Kobe Bryant’s, who needs a middle name with an interesting story? Well, Kobe Bryant does. His middle name — Bean — is a touching tribute to his father, Joe Bryant. Because of his high energy and ability to jump (guess Kobe must have inherited that particular skill), his father was nicknamed “Jellybean.” Luckily, Kobe’s parents didn’t go for the full candy-coated name and instead just dubbed him Kobe Bean Bryant.
The names for Beatrix Potter’s much-loved cast of animal characters may have come from ageing headstones.
Peter Rabbett, Jeremiah Fisher, Mr Nutkins, Mr Brock and Mr McGregor have all been found on stones at Brompton cemetery, west London, near where Miss Potter lived from 1863 to 1913. This seems to confirm local rumours that have circulated for years about the source of the names of her characters.
“Leisel was a very rare name when I was born in 1985… When I was born actually, my doctor said to my mum ‘you cannot call her Leisel because that’s not a name… You’re going to regret that one day,'” the Olympic swimmer said.
“And they absolutely did.”
The 32-year-old also went on to say having a unique name isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, especially when no one can spell it right.
“The only problem with my name is it’s spelt L-E-I-S-E-L — and everyone spells it wrong. Everyone spells it as L-I-E-S-E-L,” she said.
“So that is a bit painful, it’s a bit annoying. But I do love my name and I love that it’s different.”
From the 2003 book Exploring Twins: Towards a Social Analysis of Twinship by Elizabeth A. Stewart:
“[I]n such cultures as those of the UK and the US the implication of twinship in the broader realities of social structure is clearly indicated by the link between the ‘naming’ process for twins and class differences: higher socio-economic groups tend to choose more separate, less ‘twinsy’ names for their children, emphasizing values of and possibilities for individuation and autonomy, whereas the greater tendency for lower-class groups to actively emphasize and encourage unitary ‘twinness’, whether through naming, dress or referencing (as in the ‘twins’ as a social and linguistic unit) may well reflect values of familial solidarity and fewer opportunities for individual social advancement.”
Millennial parents are picking baby names based on available domain names, a new study claims.
[…]
According to the research, as many as one in five millennial parents said they changed or seriously considered changing their baby’s name based on what domain names were free at the time.
The grandmother of a new baby named after murdered schoolgirl Tiahleigh Palmer insists the name was meant as a tribute to the dead girl.
Tiahleigh’s furious mother Cyndi Uluave unleashed on a young couple whose baby was born last Friday, and named Tiahleigh, claiming it was disrespectful to use the name of her daughter who was killed in 2015.
[…]
‘Who names their baby after a dead girl? This wasn’t their name to use,’ she said.
A few weeks ago, I got an email from a reader looking for lists of old-fashioned double names. She was aiming for names like Thelma Dean, Eula Mae, and Gaynell — names that would have sounded trendy in the early 1900s. She also mentioned that she’d started a list of her own.
So I began scouring the interwebs. I tracked down lists of old-fashioned names, and lists of double names…but I couldn’t find a decent list of double names that were also old-fashioned.
I loved the idea of such a list, though, so I suggested that we work together to create one. She generously sent me the pairings she’d collected so far, and I used several different records databases to find many more.
I restricted my search to names given to girls born in the U.S. from 1890 to 1930. I also stuck to double names that I found written as single names, because it’s very likely that these pairings were used together in real life (i.e., that they were true double names and not merely first-middle pairings).
Pairings that seemed too timeless, like Maria Mae and Julia Rose, were omitted. I also took out many of the pairings that feature now-trendy names — think Ella, Emma, and Lucy — because they just don’t sound old-fashioned anymore (though they would have a few decades ago).
The result isn’t exhaustive, but it’s a decent sampling of real-life, old-fashioned double names. I’ve organized them by second name, and I also added links to popularity graphs for names that were in the SSA data during the correct time period (early 1900s).
I spotted plenty of other combinations that just didn’t happen to be written as single names in the records, so here’s a handy dandy little table to cover some of the other existing combinations…
Back in 1940, the baby name Sierra debuted in the U.S. baby name data rather impressively. It was the top newbie name of the year, in fact.
1942: 13 baby girls named Sierra
1941: 24 baby girls named Sierra
1940: 32 baby girls named Sierra [debut]
1939: unlisted
1938: unlisted
What was behind the debut?
“Sierra Sue,” a song that was a #1 hit in 1940 for Bing Crosby. A version by The Glenn Miller Orchestra also charted the same year.
The song was actually an updated version of an older song written by Joseph B. Carey (a “blind San Francisco organist”) in 1916. Carey died in 1930, and in 1939 the Shapiro, Bernstein & Co. sheet music company secured the rights to the song from Carey’s widow. The song “was probably revived because of the popularity of other western-style songs in the late ’30s.”
And, yes, a large number of the babies named Sierra in 1940 also had the middle name “Sue.” :) Here’s a Sierra Sue who was born in Kansas in 1940.
The Spanish word sierra, which refers to a mountain range, can be traced back to the Latin word serra, meaning “saw.”
In November of the next year, a movie called Sierra Sue starring Gene Autry was released. Here’s the scene in which Gene sings the title song:
Decades later, in 1985, usage of the name began to rise rapidly thanks to soap opera character Sierra Estaban from As the World Turns. Sierra was a top-100 name from 1993 to 2004, peaking in 1999 at 49th (just below Jordan, just above Sara).
