In early 1967, newspapers reported that TV actor Vince Edwards was going to take his ex-wife, actress Kathy Kersh, to court because she “[made] it inconvenient for him to visit their 14-month-old daughter, Devara.”
This relatively minor item landed on the front page of certain (smaller) newspapers.
I’m a little late on this one, considering that we looked at the 2021 state-by-state baby name data last week, but better late than never. :)
According to the Iowa Department of Public Health, the most popular baby names in the state in 2020 were Olivia and Oliver.
Here are Iowa’s top 10 girl names and top 10 boy names of 2020:
Girl Names
Olivia, 171 baby girls
Charlotte, 141
Evelyn, 137
Emma, 119
Ava, 116
Amelia, 115
Harper, 113
Sophia, 106
Hazel, 101
Eleanor, 96
Boy Names
Oliver, 208 baby boys
Liam, 183
Theodore, 169
Henry, 163
William, 156
Noah, 127
Owen, 126
Wyatt, 119
Jack, 117
Maverick, 112
In the girls’ top 10, Sophia, Hazel, and Eleanor replaced Avery, Nora, and Violet.
In the boys’ top 10, Theodore and Wyatt replaced Lincoln and Jackson. (Notably, Theodore jumped from 12th in 2019 up to 3rd in 2020.)
Over 2,800 boy names and over 3,600 girl names were bestowed just once in Iowa in 2020. The state says that unique names are trendy — in fact, “some Iowa counties…regularly reach 100% uniqueness, meaning there are no babies given the same name in a single year.”
Here’s a selection Iowa’s unique baby names from 2020:
Vaxston – given the fact that Covid-19 dominated the headlines in 2020, I can’t help but wonder if this one wasn’t influenced by the word vaccine. (A baby in the Philippines was named “Vaccine” in 2020, incidentally.)
Yolotli – Nahuatl for “heart.”
Finally, in 2019, the top two names in Iowa were Charlotte and Oliver.
In late December, 1965, TV actor Vince Edwards (star of the medical drama Ben Casey) and his estranged wife, actress Kathy Kersh, welcomed a baby girl. They named her Devera.
The couple had gotten married (in secret) in June of 1965, but Kathy filed for divorce just four months later.
I’m not sure how they came up with the name, but it does remind me of the Hebrew name Devorah, meaning “bee.”
In 2002, Alexander Roland and Laurence Heuschen of Belgium took a vacation to the city of Ljubljana (pronounced loo-blee-AH-nuh), the capital of Slovenia.
Years later, in October of 2007, the couple welcomed their first child, a baby girl.
Remembering their vacation, and “the legend saying that the Slovenian capital got its name because of its reputation as a romantic city” — the etymology of Ljubljana is unknown, but it may be related to the Slovenian word ljubljeni, meaning “beloved” — they decided to name their daughter Ljubljana.
Two years after that, in August of 2009, the City of Ljubljana and the Slovenian Tourist Association invited the family back for a visit. They even met the mayor, Zoran Jankovic.
During the wee hours of March 10, 1970, Delta’s Flight 86 was flying from Miami to Detroit with 35 passengers and 7 crew on board.
Somewhere over Georgia, pregnant passenger Janice Liogghio of Livonia, Michigan, gave birth to a baby boy.
What did she name him?
“I want to wait and talk to my husband about the first name,” the 22-year-old mother said. “The baby probably will have three first names. Delta will be one of them.”
They ended up naming him Natalino Delta.
“Natalino” is related to names like Natalia and Natalie, which derive from the Latin phrase natale domini, meaning “birth of the Lord” (in reference to Christmas Day). Traditionally, these names were bestowed upon Christmas babies. In this baby’s case, though, the pairing of Natalino (“birth”) with Delta was likely meant to commemorate his unusual birthplace.
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