What gave the baby name Kylian a boost in 2018?

French soccer player Kylian Mbappé
Kylian Mbappé

Usage of the baby name Kylian more than tripled from 2017 to 2018, according to the U.S. baby name data:

  • 2020: 211 baby boys named Kylian [rank: 996th]
  • 2019: 227 baby boys named Kylian [rank: 943rd]
  • 2018: 172 baby boys named Kylian
  • 2017: 55 baby boys named Kylian
  • 2016: 27 baby boys named Kylian
  • 2015: 12 baby boys named Kylian

Why?

Because of French soccer player Kylian Mbappé (pronounced kee-lee-ahn em-bah-pay).

He began his professional career in 2015, when he was just 16. He has been the French Ligue 1 top scorer for the last three seasons straight, and has twice been named both the French Player of the Year and the Ligue 1 Player of the Year.

But his international play is what caught the attention of expectant parents in the U.S.

At the international level, Mbappé was part of the French squad during the 2018 FIFA World Cup, which France ultimately won (defeating Croatia in the final game). Mbappé scored an impressive four goals during the tournament, receiving the FIFA World Cup Best Young Player Award for his performance.

What are your thoughts on the name Kylian?

P.S. Not surprisingly, usage of the name Kylian in France has also increased over the last few years…

Sources: SSA, Kylian Mbappé – Wikipedia, Ligue 1 Player of the Year – Wikipedia, French Player of the Year – Wikipedia
Image: Adapted from Mbappé playing against Dynamo Dresden by Sandro Halank under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Name quotes #107: India, Amy, Doctor

double quotation mark

From a 2020 Facebook post by The Pioneer Woman, Anne Marie “Ree” Drummond (found via Mashed):

Happy Father’s Day to my father-in-law, whom I love, my own dad, whom I adore, and my husband Ladd, pictured here with our first child (who was conceived on our honeymoon, btw…sorry if that’s TMI, we almost named her Sydney but changed our mind because we didn’t want her to have to explain it her whole life).

(They ended up naming her Alex.)

A 2017 tweet by Indian prime minister Narendra Modi to the daughter of South African cricketer Jonty Rhodes, India Rhodes (b. 2015), who was named in honor of the country:

Happy birthday to India, from India. :)

From a 1935 article about baby names in a newspaper from Perth, Australia:

After Amy Johnson (Mrs. J. A. Mollison) made her wonderful flight to Australia it seemed that every baby girl was being named “Amy.” They were comparatively lucky. “Amy” is rather a nice name, but what about the unfortunate boys who were called “Lindbergh” or “Lindy” in 1927 to commemorate the young American’s lone Atlantic flight?

Amy Johnson newspaper article 1935

(I don’t have any Australian baby name data that goes back to the late 1920s — Amy Johnson‘s solo flight from England to Australia was in 1930 — but, anecdotally, most of the Australian Amys I’m seeing in the records were born decades before the flight.)

From an article about Taylor Swift in GQ:

Swift mentions that she wrote a non-autobiographical novel when she was 14, titled A Girl Named Girl, and that her parents still have it. I ask her what it was about, assuming she will laugh. But her memory of the plot is remarkably detailed. (It’s about a mother who wants a son but instead has a girl.)

From a biography of North Carolina businessman Edward James Parrish in the book Makers of America: Biographies of Leading Men of Thought and Action, vol. II (1916):

Colonel Parrish was born near Round Hill Post Office, then in Orange County (now Durham County), on October 20, 1846, son of Colonel Doctor Claiborn and Ruthy Anne (Ward) Parrish. His father had the peculiar given name of Doctor because he was a seventh son, in accordance with the old belief that the seventh son has the gift of healing.

From an article about Irish TV personality Vogue Williams:

Everyone thinks I made up my name or I changed it at some stage and I’m actually called Joanne. But I like having a different name. Brian and I squabble all the time over baby names – because I want to give any children we have an equally mad name as the one I was given.

Babies named for Alla Nazimova

Actress Alla Nazimova in the movie "A Doll's House" (1922).
Alla Nazimova in “A Doll’s House“

Russian-American silent film actress Alla Nazimova (pronounced nah-ZEE-moh-vah) was most popular in the U.S. in the late 1910s and early 1920s.

After becoming a theater star in Russia in the early 1900s, she moved to New York and made her Broadway debut in 1906. Then she successfully transitioned from stage to screen:

In the 1910s Nazimova became one of the first Broadway actresses to match and even surpass her stage success when she became a screen star, reportedly drawing the highest salary in Hollywood from Metro, and creating the type of European exotic with which Pola Negri and, in a different way, Garbo and Deitrich would later become identified.

She was often credited simply as “Nazimova.” Her film company, founded in 1917, was also named Nazimova:

"A Nazimova Production"

The name Nazimova has never surfaced in the U.S. baby name data, but I’ve found several dozen U.S. females named Nazimova. Most were born around the time the actress was at the height of her fame. Some examples…

  • Nazimova Ratleff (née Bordenave), b. 1917 in Louisiana
  • Nazimova Marvine Gatwood (née Edwards), b. 1919 in Ohio
  • Nazimova McKinley (née Hastings), b. 1920 in Indiana
  • Nazimova Goodale (née Hatcher), b. 1920 in Iowa
  • Nazimova Smith, b. circa 1920 in Louisiana
  • Nazimova Davis (née Ebright), b. circa 1920 in Louisiana
  • Nazimova Williams (née Tolbert), b. 1921 in Mississippi
  • Nazimova Dean (née Moore), b. 1921 in Oklahoma
  • Nazimova Sweeney (née Brunson), b. 1921 in Indiana
  • Nazimova Perry, b. 1922 in Pennsylvania
  • Dorothy Nazimova Shaffer (née Montgomery), b. 1922 in Texas
  • Nazimova Regina Fleming (née Jeanfreau), b. 1922 in Louisiana
  • Nazimova Cathrine Naleilehua Katz, b. 1922 in Hawaii
  • Nazimova Brunious (née Santiago), b. 1923 in Louisiana
  • Nazimova Lee (née Holland), b. 1923 in Georgia
  • Nazimova Mae Niedermeyer (née Beckett), b. 1924 in Iowa
  • Nazimova Anderson, b. 1925 in Texas

Alla Nazimova was born in Yalta in the late 1870s. Her birth name was Mariam Edez Adelaida “Alla” Leventon. Her stage surname, Nazimova, is said to have been inspired by the character Nadezhda Nazimova from a Russian novel called Children of the Streets.

What are your thoughts on Nazimova as a given name?

P.S. Nazimova’s goddaughter, Anne Frances “Nancy” Robbins, also became an actress — under the name Nancy Davis. Nancy married fellow actor Ronald Reagan in 1952, and went on to serve as First Lady of the United States during most of the 1980s.

Sources:

What brought the baby name Breland back in 1984?

Boxer Mark Breland at the 1984 Summer Olympics
Mark Breland

The other day we talked about two girl names that were influenced by the 1984 Summer Olympics, so today let’s look at two boy names that were influenced by the same event.

The first is Breland, which appeared in the U.S. baby name data once in the 1920s, returned in 1984:

  • 1986: 9 baby boys named Breland
  • 1985: 11 baby boys named Breland
  • 1984: 10 baby boys named Breland
  • 1983: unlisted
  • 1982: unlisted

The man who brought it back was welterweight boxer Mark Breland, who won a gold medal at the Olympics after defeating South Korea’s Young-Su An.

The surname Breland could be either French or Norwegian. The French version was based on the Old French word brelenc, meaning “card table” (i.e., gambler), while the Norwegian version was a place name based on either bre, “glacier,” or breid, “wide.”

The name Tranel, like Ecaterina, was a one-hit wonder in the data in 1984:

  • 1986: unlisted
  • 1985: unlisted
  • 1984: 8 baby boys named Tranel [debut]
  • 1983: unlisted
  • 1982: unlisted

The influence here was 21-year-old, 6′ 5″ athlete Tranel Hawkins, who competed in the 400-meter hurdles. He placed 6th overall, but might have done better if he hadn’t been assigned to Lane 1.

“Lane 1 is like the kiss of death,” Hawkins said.

Which name do you like more, Breland or Tranel?

Sources: