Where did the baby name Faron come from in 1952?

Faron Young's debut album "Sweethearts or Strangers" (1957).
Faron Young album

The baby name Faron debuted (rather impressively) in the U.S. baby name data in 1952:

  • 1957: 107 baby boys named Faron
  • 1956: 146 baby boys named Faron [peak]
  • 1955: 117 baby boys named Faron
  • 1954: 82 baby boys named Faron
  • 1953: 54 baby boys named Faron
  • 1952: 12 baby boys named Faron [debut]
  • 1951: unlisted
  • 1950: unlisted

It entered the top 1,000 the next year, and stayed there until the late 1960s.

What popularized it?

A Louisiana-born honky-tonk singer named Faron Young.

His first single came out in 1951, and his earliest hit was “Goin’ Steady” (1952), which reached the top 10 on Billboard‘s Country & Western Best Seller list for two weeks in March of 1953.

The name itself peaked on the baby name charts in 1956, the year Faron started appearing in Hollywood movies. His first two films, Hidden Guns and Daniel Boone, Trail Blazer, were both released in 1956.

So where does the name Faron come from? I don’t know how Faron’s parents came up with his name, but Faron happens to be a French surname that can be traced back to an ancient Germanic word (fara) meaning “journey, fare.”

A similar name, Farren — along with a slew of variants (Farrin, Ferren, Ferrin, etc.) — saw a spike in usage for baby girls in the mid-1980s thanks to a character named Farren Connor on the soap opera The Young and the Restless.

Do you like Faron, Farren, and similar names? If so, do you think they sound better as male names or as female names?

Sources: Faron Young – Wikipedia, SSA

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