I kicked things off on March 6, 2006. My first posts were name-of-the-day posts — horrible, poorly written name-of-the-day posts. Thankfully, most are gone now. Happily deleted. (The earliest I’ve kept is a July ’06 entry on Qiana.)

Because it’s a special day, I’d like to take a moment to thank a few people:

• Thank you to C in DC, Bridgett, Wendy, Patricia, Julie, Angela, CN Heidelberg, Cathy, Abby, Jamie, Nancy F., Karen, Bess, Mookie, Alice, Tracy, Dearest, and everyone else who reads and comments regularly. You guys rock.
• Thank you to Ian Stewart, Srini G, Azeem Azeez, and every other web designer who creates WordPress themes and puts them out there for free. I’m currently using Ian Stewart’s Thematic, but I have also used (and would highly recommend) Azeem Azeez’s White as Milk and Srini G’s Fluid Blue and F2. (And, of course, thank you to the folks who came up with WordPress in the first place.)

Have a great weekend, everyone!

P.S. If you’re looking for good name-of-the-day posts, check out Abby’s at Appellation Mountain.

How did DuPont come up with the name? According to Enter Qiana (a 1968 article from TIME), the “exotic sounding Qiana” was simply “a computerized combination of random letters.”

During the 1970s, Qiana was often used to make men’s shirts with bright colors and bold patterns. (This look was popular in discos at the time.)

Qiana became popular as a baby name during the late 1970s and early 1980s. It managed to rank among the most popular names in the nation 5 times during that period:

• 1977 – 649th place (251 baby girls named Qiana)
• 1978 – 507th pace (370)
• 1979 – 556th place (331)
• 1980 – 786th place (209)
• 1981 – 941st place (158)