Popular baby names in Moscow, 2020

Flag of Russia
Flag of Russia

According to the Civil Registry of Moscow, the most popular baby names in the city last year were (again) Sofia and Alexander.

Here are Moscow’s top 6 girl names and top 6 boy names of 2020:

Girl Names

  1. Sofia (Sofya), over 2,800 baby girls
  2. Maria, 2,200 baby girls
  3. Anna, 2,084
  4. Alisa, 1,729
  5. Viktoria, 1,705
  6. Polina, 1,603

Boy Names

  1. Alexander, over 2,500 baby boys
  2. Mikhail, 2,427 baby boys
  3. Maxim, 2,284
  4. Artyom, 1,827
  5. Mark, 1,666
  6. Ivan, 1,617

Less commonly bestowed names include Vesna, Dionysus, Iskra (“spark”), Lucifer, Venus-Veronica, Sever, Severina, and Yermak-Alexander. (Yermak could be a reference to the Russian folk hero Yermak Timofeyevich.)

Source: From Mars to Zlatoslava and many more 2020 rare baby names

Image: Adapted from Flag of Russia (public domain)

Where did the baby name Yma come from in 1954?

Yma Sumac album "Mambo!" (1954)
Yma Sumac album from 1954

The name Yma debuted in the U.S. baby name data in the mid-1950s:

  • 1958: unlisted
  • 1957: 7 baby girls named Yma [peak]
  • 1956: unlisted
  • 1955: unlisted
  • 1954: 5 baby girls named Yma [debut]
  • 1953: unlisted
  • 1952: unlisted

It may look like parents were simply experimenting with the spelling of Amy, but Yma actually had a specific source: exotica singer Yma Sumac (pronounced EE-mah SOO-mak). Known as the “Peruvian songbird,” she had a four-and-a-half-octave range and a very distinctive sound.

Yma Sumac album "Legend of the Sun Virgin" (1952)
Yma Sumac album from 1952

Originally from northern highlands of Peru, Yma Sumac moved to the U.S. in the mid-1940s and released her first album in 1950. Here’s a review of her August 1950 performance at the Hollywood Bowl:

For the first few bars of a Peruvian folk chant called High Andes, the full-figured Peruvian girl onstage rumbled roundly at the bottom of the contralto range. Then, to their astonishment, she soared effortlessly up a full four octaves, began trilling like a canary at the top of coloratura. At the end of her first song, the audience was still too surprised to raise more than warm applause. The second, Tumpa (Earthquake), brought cheers; after the third, a pyrotechnical Inca Hymn to the Sun, the applause and cheers swelled to a roar for encores.

Here’s Yma lip-syncing to “Tumpa”:

She was born Zoila Augusta Emperatriz Chávarri del Castillo in the early 1920s. For her very first radio performance — in Peru, in 1942 — she used the stage name “Imma Sumack.” By the time she reached the U.S., she had settled upon the spelling “Yma Sumac.”

According to some sources, this name was part of her mother’s full name. Perhaps more importantly, it was the name of a character in the Quechua-language Peruvian drama Ollantay, thought to be of Inca origin. Often spelled Ima Sumac, the character’s name means “how beautiful” in Quechua.

Do you like the name Yma? (Do you like it more or less than Amy?)

Sources:

Babies named for the Battle of Antietam

Battle of Antietam (1862)
Battle of Antietam

The Civil War’s Battle of Antietam (pronounced an-TEE-tum) took place on September 17, 1862, in northwest Maryland, close to Antietam Creek.

The Union and Confederate armies — led by George B. McClellan and Robert E. Lee, respectively — each lost a large number of men in what turned out to be “the bloodiest single day in American history.”

So far I’ve found a handful of people named after the battle, including these three females, all of whom were born during the Civil War:

While the Battle of Antietam was a tactical draw, it was still a strategic victory for the Union, and this “gave [President] Lincoln what he needed to issue the Emancipation Proclamation that would free the slaves in the Confederate states the following January.”

The place-name Antietam was derived from an Algonquian word that may mean “swift water.”

Sources: Battle of Antietam – Wikipedia, Antietam: A Savage Day In American History, Antietam – Online Etymology Dictionary

P.S. Did you know that Antietam was the first American battlefield to be “photographed before the dead had been buried”? Here are some Antietam battlefield photographs (via the U.S. National Park Service).

Where did the baby name Naturi come from in 2001?

3LW's self-titled album (2000)
3LW album

In 2001, the name Naturi debuted in the U.S. baby name data with a dozen baby girls:

  • 2003: 16 baby girls named Naturi
  • 2002: 11 baby girls named Naturi
  • 2001: 12 baby girls named Naturi [debut]
  • 2000: unlisted
  • 1999: unlisted

Where did it come from?

New Jersey-born singer Naturi (pronounced na-TUR-ee) Naughton, who was a member of the girl group 3LW.

The group’s most successful single, “No More (Baby I’ma Do Right),” peaked at #23 on Billboard‘s Hot 100 chart in April of 2001.

How did Naughton come to have the unusual first name “Naturi”? Here’s how she explained it during a recent interview:

Naturi actually means nature’s girl, natural woman. It was a name that actually my parents kind of made by merging two names together. It has African [descent] but I don’t know what language. It’s almost spelled, as you can see, like the word nature. I love my name. You know, people messed it up a lot in the beginning. It was so frustrating but now I think everyone’s getting the hang of it.

I think it’s plausible that her parents created the name by altering the English word “nature” to make it look/sound more like any of various African names, such as Ngozi (Igbo), Imani (Swahili), or Mbali (Zulu).

Naturi Naughton left 3LW in mid-2002. She went on to have a successful acting career, appearing, for instance, in the film Fame (a remake of the original Fame from the early ’80s) and on the TV series Power.

What are your thoughts on the name Naturi?

Sources: