How popular is the baby name Irving in the United States right now? How popular was it historically? Use the popularity graph and data table below to find out! Plus, see all the blog posts that mention the name Irving.
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Jonathan Jasper “Jack” Sullivan married Bertha Phillips in early 1909. The North Carolina farm couple went on to have sixteen children — nine sons and seven daughters. Their names, in order, were…
Cretta (born in 1910)
Leland (1912)
Rosa (1913)
Woodrow (1916)
Wilmar (1918)
Joseph (1919)
Dorothy (1921)
Virginia (1923)
Irving (1924)
Blanche (1925)
C.D. (1927)
Geraldine (1928)
Marverine (1930)
Billy (1932)
Tom (1934)
Gene (1938)
Here’s more about Gene’s name:
Gene Autry Sullivan, the youngest of the children and the one who organizes the [family] reunion each year, said he was told he was named after legendary cowboy movie star Gene Autry “because his parents had run out of names by then.”
We’re all familiar with sayonara, the Japanese word for “goodbye.”
But did you know that Sayonara was also a one-hit wonder in the U.S. baby name data in the 1950s?
1960: unlisted
1959: unlisted
1958: 6 baby girls named Sayonara
1957: unlisted
1956: unlisted
The James Michener novel Sayonara came out in 1953. Set during the Korean War, it told the story of U.S. airman Lloyd Gruver, stationed in Japan, who fell in love with a Japanese entertainer called Hana-ogi. (Her namesake is a historical courtesan; hana means “flower” and ogi means “fan”).
Originally, the book was going to be adapted into a stage production à la Michener’s South Pacific. With a musical in mind, Irving Berlin wrote a song called “Sayonara.”
Instead, the story was turned into a movie (starring Marlon Brando and Miiko Taka) a few years later, and so Irving Berlin’s song ended up on the soundtrack.
Both Sayonara the movie and “Sayonara” the song came out in late 1957. The film made a bigger splash than the song did, so it may have had more of an influence on baby names.
In March of 1958 the film won four Oscars, including one each for supporting actors Red Buttons (who played Joe Kelly) and Miyoshi Umeki (who played Katsumi).
Miyoshi Umeki, both an actress and a singer, was the first Asian performer to win an Academy Award. Her win drew attention to the Japanese name Miyoshi, which debuted in the data as well in 1958:
1963: 8 baby girls named Miyoshi
1962: 7 baby girls named Miyoshi
1959: 8 baby girls named Miyoshi
1958: 20 baby girls named Miyoshi [debut]
1957: unlisted
1956: unlisted
A few months later, Umeki appeared on the TV game show “What’s My Line?” Here’s how she signed her name:
Miyoshi was Umeki’s birth name, but at the start of her singing career in Japan, she used the stage name Nancy Umeki. She reverted to her Japanese name upon relocating to America, ironically.
In 1946, the National Father’s Day Committee declared 63-year-old New Yorker George N. Davis the father with the largest family in the United States.
Whether or not his family really was “the largest family in the United States” at that time I don’t know, but I can tell you that he had a total of 24 children (though only 20 were still living in 1946). He had seven with his first wife, Lillian, and the rest with his second wife, Anna.
Here are the names of all 24, in alphabetical order:
Alice
Anna
Arthur
Beulah
Blanche
Brayton
Clark
Charles (died in infancy)
Derwood
Emma Jean
Geneva
George
Irving
Isaac (died in infancy)
Isaac
Joyce Mae (died in infancy)
Laura (died as an adult)
Lena
Lovisa
Raymond
Rupert
Viva
Wallace
Winrick
According to the 1920 Census, he also had a stepdaughter named Ella.
Out of the 24 names on the list, which girl and boy names do you like best?
Linda’s spike in 1947 is like the perfect storm of spikes. The name was already on the rise, and then the song “Linda” (1946) became a huge hit in mid-1947 — at the beginning of the post–WWII baby boom.
Several performers recorded the song, but the most successful rendition was the one sung by Buddy Clark (backed by Ray Noble’s orchestra):
If the song had been released just one year earlier — which is theoretically possible, as it was written in 1942 — the Linda spike might have been even bigger, as the largest one-year increase in births in U.S. history happened between 1945 and 1946.
The song “Linda” was created by songwriter Jack Lawrence at the request of his attorney, Lee Eastman, who wanted a song written for his 5-year-old daughter.
Being a good friend, I obliged and wrote a song for five-year-old Linda. When I made the rounds of publishers I met with frustration. Most of them like everything about the song but the name Linda. “Why Linda?” they would ask. “That’s not a popular name”. One guy said: “Call it Ida — after my mother-in-law and I’ll publish it”. I had to remind him there already was an “Ida — Sweet as Apple Cider!” Another maven suggested the name Mandy. He felt that had a more musical ring than Linda. I reminded him that Irving Berlin had thought so too, years ago he had written: “Mandy, There’s A Minister Handy”, etc.
Jack Lawrence stuck with Linda, and the song made musical (and baby name) history.
And 5-year-old Linda Eastman also made musical history, in a sense, by marrying Beatle Paul McCartney in the late 1960s.
Trivia question of the day: Only one girl name ever decreased in popularity by more than 10,000 baby girls over a one-year period. Can you guess the name?
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