According to the U.S. baby name data, the name Valencia saw a spike in usage in 1927:
- 1929: 11 baby girls named Valencia
- 1928: 22 baby girls named Valencia
- 1927: 65 baby girls named Valencia [rank: 934th]
- 1926: 18 baby girls named Valencia
- 1925: 5 baby girls named Valencia
It reached the girls’ top 1,000 for the first time that year, in fact.
What gave it a boost?
Both a song and a film.
The song, “Valencia,” was originally composed by José Padilla for the 1924 Spanish operetta La bien amada.
A couple of years later, the song — with lyrics translated into English — was introduced to Americans in the musical The Great Temptations, which ran on Broadway from May to November, 1926.
“Valencia” became very popular in the U.S. that year. Various orchestras made recordings of the song, but it was the version [vid] by Paul Whiteman and His Orchestra (featuring vocalist Franklyn Baur) that became the top single of 1926, reaching the #1 spot in early July and staying put for over 2 months.
In December of the same year, a silent film called Valencia was released. One reviewer, unimpressed, stated:
The popularity of the song seems to have been a sufficient excuse for M-G-M’s picture, which adopts the name but is not so fortunate in the story that purports to be “Valencia.”
The movie’s main character, Valencia (played by actress Mae Murray), was a Spanish dancer in love with a sailor named Felipe. But she was also being pursued by Don Fernando, the local governor, who threw Felipe in jail. Valencia made “the usual sacrifice to secure Felipe’s freedom.”
While the movie wasn’t a box office hit, it contributed to the trendiness of the baby name Valencia in 1927.
What are your thoughts on the name Valencia?
P.S. In 1950, the name — which was just starting to rise again, perhaps due to the baby boom — got another nudge from “Valencia,” sung this time by crooner Tony Martin. His rendition peaked at #18 on the charts that year.
Sources:
- Valencia (song) – Wikipedia
- The Great Temptations – IBDB
- Whitburn, Joel. A Century of Pop Music: Year-by-Year Top 40 Rankings of the Songs & Artists that Shaped a Century. Menomonee Falls, WI: Record Research Inc., 1999.
- Valencia (1926) – TCM
- “Valencia.” Review of Valencia. Film Daily 2 Jan. 1927: 9.
- Whitburn, Joel. Pop Hits, 1940-1950. Menomonee Falls, WI: Record Research Inc., 1994.
- SSA
Top image: Film still of Valencia
Before I clicked, I thought it would be Valencia on Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, but that was 90 years later. On one hand, I think it’s a very pretty name. On the other hand, being 50 years old, it makes me think of the Valencia Oranges tv commercials from childhood — does anybody else have a strong orange association with the name?
(Which reminds me — I am doing daily polls on BTN for 1964 girls’ names right now, and the other day I noticed TANGERINE lurking in the deep data of that SSA list.)
I don’t remember the commercial, but I definitely remember Tangerine in the baby name data. It’s one of the many word-names I have yet to figure out. My best guess right now is the Ray Charles record label “Tangerine Records,” founded in 1962.
Edited to add: I should also mention that Tang- names like Tangela and Tangie were seeing usage during the ’60s, so these could have been an influence as well.