Where did the baby name Gayleen come from in 1933?

Gayleen Williams

In the early 1930s, the name Gayleen popped up in the U.S. baby name data for the very first time:

  • 1935: 6 baby girls named Gayleen
  • 1934: 9 baby girls named Gayleen
  • 1933: 23 baby girls named Gayleen [debut]
  • 1932: unlisted
  • 1931: unlisted

Gayleen was the top girl-name debut of 1933, in fact.

What gave Gayleen such a a boost in 1933?

The answer seems to be a cute 2-year-old named Gayleen Williams. In December of 1932, her photo ran in newspapers nation-wide. It was accompanied by captions like this one:

Little Gayleen Williams, just past two, is the “best all around girl” in Mormondom, according to judges at a recent baby show at Ogden, Utah, who fell victim to her smile, her dimples, and her pretty set of teeth. She is the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Clifford Williams of Ogden.

Before I discovered baby Gayleen, my only guess on this name was a pair of vaudeville “acrobat dancers” called the Gaylene Sisters, who performed on tour and in at least one movie during the ’30s. The baby name Gaylene didn’t see an equivalent spike in usage in 1933, though.

Do you like the name Gayleen? Would you use it?

Source: “Best “All Around Girl” at Two.” Oil City Derrick 19 Dec. 1932: 3.

Popular baby names in Prince Edward Island (Canada), 2020

According to Prince Edward Island’s Vital Statistics office, the most popular baby names on the island in 2020 were Nora/Charlotte (tie) and Hudson.

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

Girl Names

  1. Nora, Charlotte (tie), 8 baby girls
  2. Amelia, Claire, Madison, Olivia, Scarlett (5-way tie), 6
  3. Chloe, Abigail, Avery, Isabelle (4-way tie), 5

Boy Names

  1. Hudson, 10 baby boys
  2. Liam, 9
  3. Owen, Henry, Charlie (3-way tie), 8
  4. Oliver, Emmett, Jackson, John, William, Wyatt (6-way tie), 7

These rankings are based on provisional data covering the year up to December 21st. (By that date, 608 baby girls and 616 baby boys had been born.)

In 2019, the top two names were Sophie and Liam.

Source: Here are P.E.I.’s top baby names of 2020

Baby name story: Justice

Bob Marley album
Bob Marley album

Reggae legend Bob Marley (born Robert Nesta Marley) died in mid-1981 of cancer.

Marley didn’t leave a will, so what followed was a ten-year battle over his estate, which was worth tens of millions of dollars. The estate’s court-appointed administrator was apparently “a conservative lawyer who had not liked Marley when he was alive and who […] seemed bent on taking as much as possible from those who had been closest to the deceased.”

On December 9, 1991, the Jamaican Supreme Court ruled in favor of Marley’s widow Alpharita Constantia “Rita” Marley, his 11* recognized children, and his record company.

As luck would have it, the very same day, Marley’s adult son Ziggy (born David Nesta Marley) welcomed a baby girl. Her name? Justice, “in honor of the court decision.”

*Only three of the children — Cedella, Ziggy, and Stephen — were both Bob’s and Rita’s biologically.

Sources:

Baby name story: Cheyenne

Cheyenne helicopter

A few years ago, a San Francisco newspaper ran a profile of fallen soldier Sgt. Cheyenne Willey (1969-2005), who’d died in combat near Baghdad. The profile noted that Cheyenne had been “[n]amed for the helicopter that helped his father out of a scrape in Vietnam.”

That helicopter must have been the Lockheed AH-56 Cheyenne attack helicopter, which was used by the Army in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

(This story makes me wonder if the baby name Sioux, which started popping up in the U.S. data in the ’50s, wasn’t influenced by the Korean War’s “Angel of Mercy” Bell H-13 Sioux helicopter.)

Source: “Profiles of the Lost.” East Bay Times 14 Mar. 2010.