In mid-2005, San Francisco physician Christine Angeles wrote a letter to the San Francisco Chronicle. Her letter featured not one by two baby name stories:
When I started working [at the South San Francisco Kaiser Medical Center] in 1980, the assistant manager of the medical department was named Linden. We became friends and she told me the story behind her name went back to post-World War II Berlin. Her mother saw the linden trees in bloom in the spring on Unterdenlindenstrasse. They were so beautiful, she said if she ever had a daughter she would name her Linden. This Linden was born in the early 1950s.
Enchanted by this story, I decided if I ever had a daughter, I would name her Linden. My Linden was born in 1987.
The usage of Linden for baby girls was quite low in both the 1950s and the 1980s. These days it’s a bit higher, but still nowhere near the girls’ top 1,000.
Source: “Letters to Business.” San Francisco Chronicle 7 Aug. 2005.
Image: Adapted from Linden flowers by Famartin under CC BY-SA 4.0.