How popular is the baby name Althea 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 Althea.
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The Brighter Day was a moderately popular soap opera that ran on radio from 1948 to 1956 and on television from 1954 to 1962.
The show featured the Dennis family, which was headed by widowed father Rev. Richard Dennis. His five children were adult daughters Elizabeth (Liz) and Althea, adult son Grayling, and teenage daughters Patricia (Patsy) and Barbara (Babby).
At least four Brighter Day characters influenced U.S. baby names:
Grayling
In a 1949 article, Grayling Dennis was described as “restless, charming, spoiled. He writes poetry, plays the violin, has a long string of girl friends who adore his flashing eyes and his wonderful tennis, and drinks too much. But none of these activities has helped Gray, at twenty-three, to “find himself.””
The show was radio-only at that time — listeners would hear Grayling’s name, but never see it — so it’s not surprising that a slew of spelling variants ended up as boy names in the baby name data.
The name Grayling reached the top 1000 twice in the late ’50s, but all variants saw decreased usage after the TV show was canceled in the early ’60s.
Althea
Dramatic daughter Althea dramatically boosted the usage of the name Althea in the late 1940s:
1951: 334 baby girls named Althea (rank: 454th)
1950: 309 baby girls named Althea (rank: 462nd)
1949: 235 baby girls named Althea (rank: 545th)
1948: 126 baby girls named Althea (rank: 761st)
1947: 118 baby girls named Althea (rank: 803rd)
No doubt she was also behind the debut of the spelling Altheia in 1951.
Spring
In early 1951, Althea discovered she was pregnant. Althea was eager to become an movie actress, not a mother, and “regard[ed] the baby as an annoying interruption to her ambitions.” Regardless, she soon gave birth to a baby girl named Spring, and the baby name Spring debuted in the U.S. data the very same year:
1959: 34 baby girls named Spring
1958: 44 baby girls named Spring
1957: 77 baby girls named Spring
1956: 104 baby girls named Spring
1955: 41 baby girls named Spring
1954: 37 baby girls named Spring
1953: 27 baby girls named Spring
1952: 30 baby girls named Spring
1951: 7 baby girls named Spring [debut]
1950: unlisted
By July of 1952, Althea’s daughter Spring was already 4 years old (a victim of Soap Opera Rapid Aging Syndrome). I’m not sure how often Spring appeared in the show overall, but she may have been featured prominently in 1956, judging by the usage of the baby name that year.
Babby
In a 1954 article, Babby Dennis was described as “eager and impulsive.” She was the baby of the family, and her nickname was consistently spelled with a “y” to reflect this fact.
But TV audiences clearly preferred the spelling Babbie, which debuted in 1956 — years before Babby and Babbi finally showed up:
Girls named Babbie
Girls named Babby
Girls named Babbi
1963
.
.
.
1962
8
5
.
1961
18
9
.
1960
20
15
6
1959
19
5*
6*
1958
8
.
.
1958
8
.
.
1957
5
.
.
1956
10*
.
.
1955
.
.
.
*Debut
By 1959, Babby was a young adult and involved in a romance with a gangster named Peter Nino. (Despite being a gangster, Nino was popular with TV audiences: “Nino was to be killed off in six months, but fan mail gave him a reprieve.”)
Sources:
“Does Motherhood Change a Woman’s Life?” Radio Television Mirror Apr. 1951: 34-35.
P.S. Three of the sources above refer to a single magazine that went through a bunch of name changes over the course of its existence (1930s to 1970s). The publisher was Macfadden, founded by Bernarr Macfadden, who knew a bit about name changes himself…
It’s Five-Name Friday! Here is today’s baby name request:
We’re having a boy and want his name to sound good with Althea and Penelope — his sisters. We’d love if it was a Greek name as well, but honestly we’re open to anything.
Can you come up with five solid baby name suggestions for this person?
Here are the rules:
Be independent. Choose your five names before looking at anyone else’s comment.
Be sincere. Stick to legit recommendations you would offer a real-life friend.
Five names total in your comment. If you go over, I will delete the extras.
If you’re on the hunt for baby names with a numerological value of 2, you’re in luck! Because today’s post features hundreds of 2-names.
Before we get to the names, though — how do we know that they’re “twos” in numerology?
Turning names into numbers
Here’s how to calculate the numerological value of a name.
First, for each letter, come up with a number to represent that letter’s position in the alphabet. (Letter A would be number 1, letter B would be number 2, and so forth.) Then, add all the numbers together. If the sum has two or more digits, add the digits together recursively until the result is a single digit. That single digit is the name’s numerological value.
For instance, the letters in the name Aurora correspond to the numbers 1, 21, 18, 15, 18, and 1. The sum of these numbers is 74. The digits of 74 added together equal 11, and the digits of 11 added together equal 2 — the numerological value of Aurora.
Baby names with a value of 2
Below you’ll find the most popular 2-names per gender, according to the latest U.S. baby name data. I’ve further sub-categorized them by total sums — just in case any of those larger numbers are significant to anyone.
2 via 11
The letters in the following baby names add up to 11, which reduces to two (1+1=2).
Girl names (2 via 11)
Boy names (2 via 11)
Adea, Fe, Aia
Aj, Ja, Cabe
2 via 20
The letters in the following baby names add up to 20, which reduces to two (2+0=2).
There’s no definitive answer, unfortunately, because various numerological systems exist, and each one has its own interpretation of the number two. That said, if we look at a couple of modern numerology/astrology websites, we see 2 being described as “diplomatic,” “cooperative,” “peaceful,” “gentle,” and “understanding.”
We can also look at associations, which are a bit more concrete. Here are some things that are associated with the number 2:
Hands
Feet
Eyes
Ears
Lungs
Chopsticks
Knitting needles
Complementary pairings (e.g., pen and paper, bow and arrow, peanut butter and jelly)
Dualities (e.g., day and night, yin and yang, war and peace)
Boxing (2 competitors; 2 fists)
Partner dancing
DNA double helix
What does the number 2 mean to you? What are your strongest associations with the number?
P.S. To see names with other numerological values, check out the posts for the numbers one, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, and nine.
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