According to the U.S. baby name data, the name Renata saw an impressive spike in usage in 1980:
- 1982: 146 baby girls named Renata
- 1981: 224 baby girls named Renata [rank: 737th]
- 1980: 720 baby girls named Renata [rank: 336th]
- 1979: 229 baby girls named Renata [rank: 727th]
- 1978: 47 baby girls named Renata
Here’s a visual:
The same year, the spelling Renatta also reached peak usage, and the spelling Rennata appeared for the first time in the data.
What was influencing these names around that time?
Television character Renata Sutton (played by French actress Sonia Petrovna), who was part of the long-running soap opera Search for Tomorrow — but only for a short time.
The character was introduced to viewers as Renata Corelli in August of 1979. (Despite being from Italy, Renata had a heavy French accent.) She married fellow character David Sutton during the spring of 1980. Just a few month later, though, pregnant Renata went into labor in the middle of a house fire. She didn’t survive.
Nationally syndicated soap opera columnist Jon-Michael Reed believed the show had made a big mistake by killing off Renata, who he described as “one of the most beautiful and unusual soap heroines in recent memory.”
What are your thoughts on the name Renata?
P.S. Renata’s baby girl, Mia, managed to survive the fire — and may have given the baby name Mia a slight boost in 1981, though it’s hard to tell.
Sources:
- Sonia Petrovna – Wikipedia
- Reed, Jon-Michael. “Soap Report.” Courier-Express 25 Aug. 1979: 11.
- Reed, Jon-Michael. “Tune in Tomorrow.” Daily Review 25 Aug. 1980: 4.
- SSA
Image: Screenshot of Search for Tomorrow
Renee has been way more prevalent in my life than Renata. I even know a man named Rene (he’s a Swiss national, married to my friend Sarah, who grew up in Iowa). However, I did have a classmate in elementary school named Renate, one German form of Renata — Renate’s parents were from Germany. Strange that the Search for Tomorrow Renata was French, because Renee is the French form — Renata is Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, etc. — almost every European version except French, in fact. ?
I love Soap Opera names, especially from the 70’s and ‘80’s — Hilary, Blake, Morgan, Sunny, Harley, Liza. I could go on and on … ?
@Sharky – The character was Italian, but the actress playing the character was French. (I’m sorry if I made that part confusing.) So that’s why the character was “Renata” as opposed to “Rene.”
@Anne Valentine – I wish I knew all the soap names, from all the decades! :) Certain soap characters have had such a big influence on baby names. I’ve blogged about a few, but no doubt I’m missing dozens.
Soap opera names! One of my daughters has the name of a character from One Life to Live. The show was where I first heard the name.
Looking at the SSA data for the name, it seems that OLTL might have influenced parents. When the character was introduced in 1968, her name was ranked 403 (502 the previous year). In 1969 the name jumped to 266. At the time of the character’s death in 1973, the name ranked 178 and continued to rise as high as 140. By the time my daughter was born, the name had dropped to 200, and now it holds almost the same rank as it did in 1967.
Huh, I didn’t know OLTL is what made Meredith popular. Cool. I love that name, and that was my favorite soap. I know technically Dorian is a male name, but since Dorian Lord from OLTL was the only Dorian I ever knew about, I still think of it as a female name.
My cousin’s middle name is Tara because there was a Tara on All My Children in 1972 when she was born. I’ve always had a soft spot for the name Opal because she was a character on AMC, too — in fact, she was Tad’s biological mother, so she was probably Tara’s bio-mom, too. (Tara died before I was old enough for soaps, I believe, yet I retain all the lore I ever knew about it.)
Nancy, did Luna Moody from One Life to Live influence the rise of that name? It seems like it became popular way afterwards — Luna was mostly on OLTL from 1991 to 1995. It was definitely the first time I’d heard that name, though.
Thank you so much for bringing up Meredith Lord! I’ve been wondering about the late-1960s rise of the name Meredith for a long time now, but I never got around to researching it. That character is definitely the answer!
I’m not sure if Luna Moody had much influence on the baby name Luna. For soap opera characters, the impact is typically immediate. (The introduction of Dorian Lord in 1973, for instance, gave a boost to the female usage of Dorian that same year.) But the name Luna didn’t see an appreciable increase until 1994:
If there are any other memorable soap opera characters (or character *names*) you guys can think of, please let me know!
(My mom used to watch Days of our Lives, so I do have some hazy memories of those characters — a possessed lady named Marlena, for instance — but that’s the extent of my soap opera knowledge.)
Oh yes, Marlena, played by Deidre Hall. (Do you have an article about Deirdre and how/why it was bastardized into Deidre? And why Aussies pronounce Deirdre so wrong?) I pretty much know all the big soap opera characters and their actors if it happened in the 1980s, even though I only really watched the ABC soaps (with a brief foray into CBS’s Guiding Light one summer).
Gosh, maybe somebody should write a book specifically about soaps and names. Unless that already exists? Surely someone has done their linguistics Masters thesis on it.
I would love to read a book/thesis about soap opera names. :)
I can’t account for the spelling of Deidre Hall’s first name, but I can understand why certain people might prefer the spelling “Deidre.”
When I was a kid/teen in the Northeast, I never heard the initial R-sound in Deirdre. The first syllable sounded more like “deah.” (Similar to the way Marisa Tomei pronounces “deer” in My Cousin Vinny, though not so drawn-out.) So I can imagine a person from, say, New York or Boston preferring the spelling Deidre because it reflects how they might want other people to say the name (i.e., like they do).
As for other parts of the world…my guess is that the name has just morphed to fit those various accents. :)