I’ve long been curious about the name Clione.
It debuted rather impressively in the national dataset in 1938, but dropped off the next year and hasn’t been back since.
- 1940: unlisted
- 1939: unlisted
- 1938: 16 baby girls named Clione [debut]
- 1937: unlisted
- 1936: unlisted
Clione is similar to the name Cleone, which was in use during the first half of the 20th century, but I doubt it’s a variant because Clione’s single-year appearance doesn’t match up with Cleone’s peak usage (from the mid-1910s to the mid-1920s).
One adorable thing that kept thwarting my search efforts was the genus Clione, which includes floating sea slugs or “sea angels”:
Not the source of the name, but makes a great image for this post. :)
Can anyone offer any clues about Clione?
Curious. As always I spent far too much time searching for this. I found a short story published in 1934:
http://trove.nla.gov.au/ndp/del/article/47479119
And a couple called Clio and Elaine who named a daughter Clione in 1943. But nothing really to explain it.
Thanks again for your help!
I hadn’t found that story. I wonder if it appeared later on in U.S. newspapers? Or maybe this is a set of characters he wrote about a few times? Hm.
(Oh man, if people only knew how many gazillions of hours I’ve spent trying to figure out certain names… :)
Found an obscure Irish name that may be related to Clione: Clíodhna
http://www.behindthename.com/name/cli10odhna
Maybe a Clíodhna sparked the Clione spike?
That’s an interesting theory, as the names are pretty close. I tried searching for a person/event involving the name Cliodhna from 1937-1938, though, and didn’t have any luck.