How popular is the baby name Amy in the United States right now? How popular was it historically? Find out using the graph below! Plus, check out all the blog posts that mention the name Amy.
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Other spellings of the name (like Jacy, Jacey, Jaycee, and Jayci) also saw increased usage that year.
What was the influence?
U.S. gymnast Jaycie Phelps. She was part of the 1996 U.S. women’s gymnastics team — the “Magnificent Seven” — that won gold at the Summer Olympics in Atlanta. The U.S. gold broke Soviet Union’s decades-long winning streak in the women’s team all-around.
Jaycie Phelps, who was born and raised in Indiana, is now back in her home state running the Jaycie Phelps Athletic Center.
What are your thoughts on the name Jaycie? (What spelling do you prefer?)
P.S. The other six gymnasts on the U.S. team that year were named Amanda, Amy, Dominique (2), Kerri, and Shannon.
Media-savvy political activist Abbott “Abbie” Hoffman (1936-1989) and his second wife, Anita Kushner, welcomed a baby boy in mid-1971.
Abbie’s first two children (Andrew and Amy) didn’t have politicized names, but his third got the name america — deliberately spelled with a small a in order “to distinguish the child’s name from a jingoistic sentiment.”
[T]he birth of his and Anita’s son, “america,” was treated as a political statement, as an affirmation of their optimism about the future and their roots in American culture.
Anita added (years later) that they’d gone with a lower-case a “because [they] didn’t want to be pretentious.”
Another name they’d considered for their son? Tupac.
In the Hoffmans’ book To America with Love, one of the letters Anita wrote (in July of 1974) began:
I met Affeni [sic] Shakur today. What an up. She is vibrant, beautiful, wise with experience. We talked about our children a lot and the heavy history behind each. Did you know she named her son Tupac Amaru, after the last Inca prince who rebelled against the Spaniards? We had considered naming america that. Tupac’s the same age.
(Tupac’s mother’s name was actually spelled Afeni.)
Abbie Hoffman went underground in 1974 (in order to evade arrest). He remained in hiding, using the alias “Barry Freed,” for six years. During that period, Anita and america were under constant FBI surveillance. So Anita and Abbie began to call their son “Alan” as an added layer of protection.
Alan reverted back to his real name at the start of high school (in the mid-1980s), hoping that “america” would impress a “cute punk rock girl” in his class.
In September of 2004, identical twin boys were born to Iowa City couple Brian and Amy Boelk, who met while attending the University of Iowa.
The boys’ names?
Kinnick and Carver — after the school’s Kinnick Stadium and Carver-Hawkeye Arena.
Kinnick Stadium was named after Heisman Trophy winner Nile Kinnick, while Carver-Hawkeye Arena was named (in part) after Iowa philanthropist Roy J. Carver.
The name Kinnick first appeared in the U.S. baby name data in 2004 — the year the twins were born, curiously. (Did news of their names have an influence on other expectant parents…?)
Unsurprisingly, most of the usage so far has been in the state of Iowa:
Boys named Kinnick, U.S.
Boys named Kinnick, Iowa
2021
16
11 (69%)
2020
23
14 (61%)
2019
22
14 (64%)
2018
18
10 (56%)
2017
29
19 (66%)
2016
37
25 (68%)
2015
34
28 (82%)
2014
36
25 (69%)
2013
23
16 (70%)
2012
35
28 (80%)
2011
49
39 (80%)
2010
40
36 (90%)
2009
29
24 (83%)
2008
22
17 (77%)
2007
27
25 (93%)
2006
21
16 (76%)
2005
10
7 (70%)
2004
8*
7* (88%)
*Debut
Which of the two names, Kinnick or Carver, do you like more?
Happy Father’s Day to my father-in-law, whom I love, my own dad, whom I adore, and my husband Ladd, pictured here with our first child (who was conceived on our honeymoon, btw…sorry if that’s TMI, we almost named her Sydney but changed our mind because we didn’t want her to have to explain it her whole life).
From the 2008 essay “What’s in a name?” by Arvid Huisman in the Daily Freeman-Journal:
As a first grader I wanted to be named Johnnie or Bobbie or Billie or Tommie — just about anything except Arvid.
By the time I was a young adult I realized that a unique name can be an asset and I continue to believe that. Once people commit an uncommon name to memory they don’t soon forget and that’s a good thing in business.
After Amy Johnson (Mrs. J. A. Mollison) made her wonderful flight to Australia it seemed that every baby girl was being named “Amy.” They were comparatively lucky. “Amy” is rather a nice name, but what about the unfortunate boys who were called “Lindbergh” or “Lindy” in 1927 to commemorate the young American’s lone Atlantic flight?
(I don’t have any Australian baby name data that goes back to the late 1920s — Amy Johnson‘s solo flight from England to Australia was in 1930 — but, anecdotally, most of the Australian Amys I’m seeing in the records were born decades before the flight.)
In the past, rural children were named after animals because poor farmers hoped they would bring up their children as cheaply as raising pigs and puppies.
He was so popular and tied to teen culture that Rydell High School in the stage and screen musical “Grease” was named for him.
“It was so nice to know that the high school was named after me,” he told the Allentown Morning Call in 2014. “And I said, ‘Why me?’ It could have been Anka High, Presley High, Everly High, Fabian High, Avalon High. And they came up with Rydell High, and, once again, total honor.”
Using a woman’s name in public is frowned upon and can be considered an insult. Many Afghan men are reluctant to say the names of their sisters, wives or mothers in public. Women are generally only referred to as the mother, daughter or sister of the eldest male in their family, and Afghan law dictates that only the father’s name should be recorded on a birth certificate.
The problem starts early, when a girl is born. It takes a long time for her to be given a name. Then when a woman is married her name does not appear on her wedding invitations. When she is ill her name does not appear on her prescription, and when she dies her name does not appear on her death certificate or even her headstone.
I also liked the last two paragraphs:
Sahar, an Afghan refugee in Sweden who used to be a freelance journalist but now works in a nursing home, told the BBC she had been a distant but staunch supporter of the campaign since it began. When Sahar first heard about the idea, she decided to post a message on social media.
“I am proud to write that my name is Sahar,” she wrote. “My mother’s name is Nasimeh, my maternal grandmother’s name is Shahzadu, and my paternal grandmother’s name is Fukhraj.”
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