What gave the baby name Vanna a boost in the 1980s?

Game show hostess Vanna White on "Wheel of Fortune" (January, 1986).
Vanna White on “Wheel of Fortune

The baby name Vanna only saw a smattering of usage every year until the early 1980s, when it suddenly became trendy:

  • 1988: 58 baby girls named Vanna
  • 1987: 87 baby girls named Vanna
  • 1986: 111 baby girls named Vanna [peak]
  • 1985: 71 baby girls named Vanna
  • 1984: 39 baby girls named Vanna
  • 1983: 21 baby girls named Vanna
  • 1982: 7 baby girls named Vanna
  • 1981: 8 baby girls named Vanna
Graph of the usage of the baby name Vanna in the U.S. since 1880
Usage of the baby name Vanna

The like-sounding names Savannah and Savanna also got a boost during that time period, and the spelling variant Vannah debuted the year Vanna hit peak usage.

What spurred all this interest in the name Vanna?

If you owned a TV set during the ’80s, you already know the answer: Vanna White, hostess of the popular game show Wheel of Fortune.

Vanna White was chosen out of a field of 200 hopefuls to join host Pat Sajak on the show in December of 1982. (The original hostess, Susan Stafford, quit in October.)

Her job essentially consisted of walking in front of a puzzle board — sometimes right to left, sometimes left to right — and turning tiles to reveal letters as contestants made their guesses. (Today she still walks back and forth, but the puzzle board letters are touch-activated.)

Wheel of Fortune became the highest-rated syndicated show on television in the mid-1980s. As a result, Vanna White became “TV’s most improbable cult heroine.” She became so popular, in fact, that the press dubbed the phenomenon Vanna-mania.

(Several years after peak Vanna-mania, one reporter noted that it “was one of the oddest phenomenons of our time, bestowing superstar status on a woman whose only obvious skill was turning letters on cue.”)

By early 1986, Vanna White knew she had multiple namesakes:

“I’ve gotten tons of fan mail,” she marvels. “Love letters, marriage proposals, children being named after me, which is quite an honor. Every year on Sept. 4, I get a picture of this adorable little Vanna.”

So, where did the original Vanna get her unusual first name?

[T]he name Vanna came from my grandmother’s next-door neighbor. Her name was Vana Woorell … and she spelled her name with one n … my mother liked the name so much, she said, Well, I’m gonna name my daughter Vanna with two n‘s.

What are your thoughts on the name Vanna? Would you use it?

Sources:

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