How popular is the baby name Aletta 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 Aletta.

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Popularity of the baby name Aletta


Posts that mention the name Aletta

What gave the baby name Christiaan a boost in 1968?

South African cardiac surgeon Christiaan Barnard (1922-2001)
Dr. Christiaan Barnard

The baby name Christiaan (pronounced KRIS-tee-ahn) — the Dutch and Afrikaans form of Christian — saw peak usage in the U.S. in two different years: 1968 and 1970.

  • 1972: 22 baby boys named Christiaan
  • 1971: 30 baby boys named Christiaan
  • 1970: 43 baby boys named Christiaan
  • 1969: 24 baby boys named Christiaan
  • 1968: 43 baby boys named Christiaan
  • 1967: 8 baby boys named Christiaan
  • 1966: unlisted

The name’s 1968 upswing represents the second-steepest rise among baby boy names that year (after Dustin).

Here’s the graph:

Graph of the usage of the first name Christiaan in the U.S. since 1880.
Usage of the first name Christiaan

What was calling attention to the name Christiaan in the late ’60s and early ’70s?

South African surgeon Christiaan Barnard, who made headlines worldwide after performing the first human heart transplant on December 3, 1967, at Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town.

Dr. Barnard led a team of 20 surgeons as they transplanted a heart from the body of donor Denise Darvall (a 25-year-old woman who’d been fatally injured in a car accident) into the body of recipient Louis Washkansky (a 55-year-old man terminally ill with heart disease).

The operation was considered a success, even though Washkansky died of pneumonia 18 days later.

The transplant attracted unprecedented media coverage, turning Dr. Barnard into an overnight celebrity:

Charismatic and photogenic, he appeared on magazine covers, met dignitaries and film stars, drawing crowds and photographers wherever he went.

Dr. Barnard performed a second human heart transplant on January 2, 1968 — just one month after the first. The second recipient, 59-year-old Philip Blaiberg, not only survived the operation, but lived for another 19 months and 15 days before dying of organ rejection in August of 1969.

The success of this second operation “secured the future of heart transplants.” It also likely caused the usage of Christiaan to peak again in 1970.

(That said, news about Dr. Barnard’s personal life may have also been a factor. He divorced his wife of twenty years, Aletta, in mid-1969 and married a 19-year-old Johannesburg socialite named Barbara Zoellner in early 1970.)

I’m not sure how many of the baby boys named Christiaan during the late ’60s and early ’70s were taught to pronounce their names KRIS-tee-ahn, as I couldn’t find any clips of U.S. newscasters using the Afrikaans pronunciation. Even talk show host Dick Cavett defaulted to the American pronunciation, KRIS-chen, when Dr. Christiaan Barnard appeared on The Dick Cavett Show [vid] in May of 1970.

What are your thoughts on the name Christiaan?

Sources:

Image: Adapted from Professor Barnard photo by Jac. de Nijs via Nationaal Archief under CC0.

What gave the baby name Aletta a boost in 1935?

The novel "Aletta Laird" (1935) by Barbara Webb
“Aletta Laird” by Barbara Webb

The relatively rare name Aletta has been in the U.S. baby name data since the 1890s, but it saw a distinct spike in usage in 1935:

  • 1937: 13 baby girls named Aletta
  • 1936: 28 baby girls named Aletta
  • 1935: 37 baby girls named Aletta [peak usage]
  • 1934: 5 baby girls named Aletta
  • 1933: 10 baby girls named Aletta

In fact, Aletta’s sudden increase made it the second-highest relative rise of 1935, after Norita.

So what gave it a nudge?

The Barbara Webb story Aletta Laird, which was both serialized in the newspapers and released as a book in 1935.

I haven’t had a chance to read Aletta Laird — a “[r]omantic historical fiction” set in “old Bermuda, at the time of the American Revolution” — but here’s a description of how it begins:

Aletta Laird came to St. George’s in the Spring of 1775 to rejoin her father. Almost immediately after stepping ashore, she incurred the wrath of the tyrannical Governor, bought and Indian slave to save him from death by flogging, and learned that her father had died in prison as a traitor to his King. She also met the two men who were to lay siege to her heart, one the nephew of the Governor, the other a rebel American captain.

What are your thoughts on the baby name Aletta?

Sources:

Image: “Aletta Laird” in the Philadelphia Inquirer Public Ledger on June 2, 1935

P.S. Interestingly, the very similar name Aleeta saw peak usage just a couple of years earlier…

Where did the baby name Verilea come from in 1936?

The uncommon name Verilea was a one-hit wonder in the U.S. baby name data way back in the 1930s:

  • 1938: unlisted
  • 1937: unlisted
  • 1936: 7 baby girls named Verilea [debut]
  • 1935: unlisted
  • 1934: unlisted

In fact, Verilea is tied with Arolyn as the top one-hit wonder girl name of 1936.

I have yet to figure out the source of Arolyn (which looks to me like a cut-off Carolyn), but I do know the source of Verilea.

As with several other rare names from the first half of the 1900s (like Thurley, Thayle, Ortrude, Ardeth, Aletta, Joretta, Elanda, Perilla, and Lorry) the influence was a fictional story printed in the newspapers.

The tale that featured “Verilea” was Unknown Sweetheart by Anne Gardner. It was serialized during the spring of 1936 and the main character was a young woman named Verilea Davis, who began on “a dirty, grinding old bus on the hill-roads of Kentucky” and ended up in “a modernistic New York penthouse high above smart Manhattan.”

Her name may have been inspired by the vocabulary word verily, which means “truly, certainly.”

Do you like the baby name Verilea? Would you use it?

Source: “I Don’t Even Know His Name, But…I Love Him!” Des Moines Tribune 22 Oct. 1935: 9.