The new year is a few days away! Going from 2010 to 2011 will be cool, though probably not as cool as it was going from 1999 to 2000 (Y2K!) or from 2000 to 2001 (the official start of the new millennium).
Speaking of the millennium, did you know that dozens of baby girls were given the names Millennium and Millennia (and variants) about a decade ago? The names started popping up in the mid-90s and were gone by the early 2000s.
| 1996 | 1997 | 1998 | 1999 | 2000 | 2001 | |
| Millennium | . | . | . | 8* | 19 | 5 |
| Millenium | . | . | . | . | 7* | . |
| Millennia | . | 5* | . | 11 | 38 | . |
| Millenia | 5* | 7 | . | 23 | 41 | 10 |
| Milenia | . | . | . | 11* | 22 | . |
| Millinia | . | . | . | . | 5* | . |
(Millenium and Millinia were one-hit wonders.)
So why did Millenia and Millennia appear early? A pair of products: a car and a fragrance. The Mazda Millenia was a sedan launched (in North America) around 1995, and Millennia was a perfume launched by Avon in 1996.
I’m curious how many were named around New Year’s vs. the rest of 1999 or 2000.
I am too. I was able to track down one of the Millenniums from 2000, and she was indeed born on New Year’s Day. (And I found a baby boy with the middle name Millennium also born on January 1st.) But so far I haven’t been able to find records for any of the other 1999/2000 Millennias/Millenniums.
Looks like Japan also had a baby name that referenced the Millennium! It was Nichika, which often included kanji meaning “two thousand.”