In 1978, the interesting name Sayward debuted as a girl name in the U.S. baby name data:
- 1980: 26 baby girls named Sayward
- 1979: 12 baby girls named Sayward
- 1978: 22 baby girls named Sayward [debut]
- 1977: unlisted
- 1976: unlisted
Where did it come from?
A three-part TV miniseries called The Awakening Land, which aired on NBC in February of 1978. The miniseries chronicled the struggles of pioneer woman Sayward Luckett, who moved with her family to the unsettled Ohio Valley in the last years of the 1700s.
Sayward was played by played by Elizabeth Montgomery (who was playing Samantha on Bewitched a decade earlier). Montgomery was nominated for the Emmy for “Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited Series” for her portrayal of Sayward.
And Sayward wasn’t the only character with an interesting name. Her parents were Worth and Jary; her younger sisters were Genny, Achsa, and Sulie; her husband was Portius; her children included sons Resolve, Kinzie, and Chancey and daughters Huldah, Sulie, and Dezia.
The name Sulie, used for two different characters, also debuted in the data in 1978:
- 1980: unlisted
- 1979: 5 baby girls named Sulie
- 1978: 5 baby girls named Sulie [debut]
- 1977: unlisted
- 1976: unlisted
And the name Chancey, used for Sayward’s youngest son, saw peak usage the same year:
- 1980: 37 baby boys named Chancey
- 1979: 24 baby boys named Chancey
- 1978: 53 baby boys named Chancey [peak]
- 1977: 17 baby boys named Chancey
- 1976: 22 baby boys named Chancey
The story was originally a trilogy of books published in the 1940s and ’50s by Conrad Richter. The third book, called The Town, won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1951.
In the books, the Luckett family had one more child, a boy named Wyitt, and Sayward and Portius had a total of ten children (sons Resolve, Guerdon, Kinzie, and Chancey; daughters Sulie, Huldah, Libby, Sooth, Dezia, and Massey).
What are your thoughts on the baby name Sayward? (Or on any of the other names in the series?)
Source: The Awakening Land – IMDb
