The baby name Cepeda surfaced in the U.S. baby name data three times, all during the 1960s:
- 1970: unlisted
- 1969: 9 baby boys named Cepeda
- 1968: 8 baby boys named Cepeda
- 1967: unlisted
- 1966: unlisted
- 1965: unlisted
- 1964: unlisted
- 1963: 7 baby boys named Cepeda [debut]
- 1962: unlisted
- 1961: unlisted
Where did it come from?
First baseman Orlando Cepeda, who played baseball professionally on six different teams from 1958 to 1974. He’s now part of the National Baseball Hall of Fame.
His surname first appeared in the data the year after he played in his first World Series. (His team, the Giants, lost to Yogi Berra‘s team, the Yankees.)
It returned to the data the year after his team (now the Cardinals) won the World Series (against the Red Sox) and he was voted National League MVP.
Orlando Cepeda was born and raised in Puerto Rico. His surname can be traced back to either of two locations in Spain that took their names from the Spanish word cepeda, which is based on cepa, meaning “tree stump.”
Sources:
- Orlando Cepeda – Wikipedia
- Hanks, Patrick. (Ed.) Dictionary of American Family Names. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.
Image via Wikimedia
