The 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake, which occurred in late December, triggered a deadly tsunami that reached a number of countries.
- In Kerala, India, a couple named Kutten and Priyanka managed to escape the waves. Their newborn baby girl was rescued by a relative. They named their daughter Tsunami to commemorate the event, and their survival.
- In the village of Baan Nam Khem in Thailand, a pregnant woman named Od Judet was swept up by the wave. “There were nine pregnant women in the village then. Only my baby survived. So we called her Tsunami.”
- On Little Andaman island, Lakshmi Narain Roy and his pregnant wife Namita escaped the tsunami with the help of a cycle-rickshaw. Soon after, Namita gave birth to a baby boy, but suffered from complications. They made the 7-hour journey to a hospital in Port Blair, where doctors suggested that they name the baby Tsunami. So they did.
Parents in the U.S. started naming their babies Tsunami that year as well. The name debuted in the SSA’s data in 2004 and showed up again in 2005:
- 2006: unlisted
- 2005: 7 baby girls named Tsunami
- 2004: 5 baby girls named Tsunami [debut]
- 2003: unlisted
The Japanese word tsunami means “harbor wave.”
Interesting contrast: Hurricane Katrina (2005), which destroyed much of New Orleans eight months later, ultimately caused the popularity of the baby name Katrina to plummet in the U.S.
Update: Several years later, in 2009, a tsunami struck the Samoa Islands. In the village of Saleapaga, the two-day old son of Fineaso and Terri Agaalenuu was carried to safety by a relative. Originally named Narineaso, the baby was re-named Tsunami following his lucky escape.
Sources:
- “Baby named after killer waves.” Rediff.com India News 1 Jan. 2005.
- “Couple name newborn son Tsunami.” The Star [Malaysia] 2 Jan. 2005.
- “Samoan Baby Named Tsunami.” Independent Online 2 Oct. 2009.
- “Tsunami 2004: ‘I named my baby Tsunami’.” BBC 26 Dec. 2014.
Image: The Great Wave off Kanagawa (1831) by Hokusai
[Latest update: Nov. 2023]
Your Katrina information isn’t entirely accurate. Actually, the year of Hurricane Katrina, the name ROSE in the USA by a couple of spots. And then the year AFTER that, it fell a couple of spots, to about where it had been before.
My info is accurate — I just ignored that uptick. :)
But thank you for bringing it up!
I haven’t been able to track down official baby name stats for Louisiana, Mississippi and other states affected by the hurricane, but blog posts I’ve found on the topic suggest that the popularity of Katrina in these states increased in 2005.
So that 2005 uptick may have been caused by parents who experienced the hurricane and chose the name Katrina to pay tribute to their experience/survival. (The same reason Tsunami’s parents chose the name Tsunami.)
A girl in my street has named her sons Tsunami and Earthquake. They were triplets, so their third (a daughter) was called Katrina. No joke!
Katrina as a baby name has dropped to 815th in the rankings as of the 2009 data from the Social Security Administration. Use their search tool http://www.ssa.gov/OACT/babynames/
my name no joke is tsunami,
and the only reason my father named me that was because he liked it for the name of a girl.
My daughter was born 3-6-13 an her name is Tsunami Yael Akasha Jackson. I chose each name myself with no definite reason besides I think tha names are beautiful. Plus a tsunami, regardless of tha destructive power is a beautiful act of God.