How popular is the baby name Ariel 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 Ariel.

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Popularity of the baby name Ariel


Posts that mention the name Ariel

What gave the baby name Ren a boost in 1984?

The character Ren McCormack from the movie "Footloose" (1984)
Ren McCormack from “Footloose“

The simple name Ren, after dropping out of the U.S. baby name data for a year in 1983, returned with nearly two dozen baby boys in 1984:

  • 1986: 22 baby boys named Ren
  • 1985: 32 baby boys named Ren
  • 1984: 21 baby boys named Ren
  • 1983: unlisted
  • 1982: 10 baby boys named Ren

What brought it back?

The main character of the movie Footloose, which was released February of 1984 and went on to become the seventh-highest-grossing film of the year.

Ren McCormack (played by Kevin Bacon) was a teenager who loved to dance. The problem? He’d recently moved from the big city to a rural town where dancing was banned, thanks to the efforts of a local preacher.

As Ren challenged the anti-dancing law (so that the town’s high school could hold a senior prom), he also became romantically involved with the preacher’s rebellious daughter Ariel* (played by Lori Singer).

Coincidentally, one of the fastest-rising boy names in the U.S. in 1984 was the similar name Ryne; the trendiness of Ryne could have influenced the usage of Ren as well.

What are your thoughts on the name Ren? Do you like it as a standalone name, or do you prefer it as a nickname for something longer (like Lorenzo, Terrence, Warren, or Reynold)?

*Ariel was apparently the inspiration behind the name of Disney’s Little Mermaid…

Sources: Footloose – Wikipedia, 1984 in film – Wikipedia, Footloose review – Roger Ebert, SSA

Image: Screenshot of Footloose

What gave the baby name Tiana a boost in 2010?

The character Tiana from the movie "The Princess and the Frog" (2009)
Tiana from “The Princess and the Frog“

According to the U.S. baby name data, the name Tiana came close to doubling in usage in 2010:

  • 2012: 712 baby girls named Tiana [rank: 440th]
  • 2011: 822 baby girls named Tiana [rank: 386th]
  • 2010: 970 baby girls named Tiana [rank: 331st]
  • 2009: 504 baby girls named Tiana [rank: 598th]
  • 2008: 480 baby girls named Tiana [rank: 642nd]

What accounts for that sudden spike?

The very first African-American Disney Princess.

Tiana (pronounced tee-ah-nah) was the protagonist of the animated movie The Princess and the Frog, which came out in December of 2009.

The movie, a modern adaptation of the German fairy tale “The Frog Prince,” was set in New Orleans in the 1920s.

Tiana was a hardworking waitress who dreamed of opening her own restaurant. After being persuaded to kiss a frog who was actually a prince, though, Tiana was unexpectedly turned into a frog as well. So the two frogs set off on a journey through the bayou in search of the voodoo priestess who might be able to restore them both to human form.

Tiana and her parents from the movie "The Princess and the Frog" (2009)
Tiana and her parents from “The Princess and the Frog“

The Princess and the Frog was a success at the box office — though it might have been an even bigger success had the record-breaking sci-fi film Avatar not been released one week later.

So, how did the character come to be called Tiana?

She was initially named Maddy (a diminutive of the French name Madeleine) in the film’s treatment, which was written by co-directors Ron Clements and John Musker in early 2006.

A year later, Disney revealed her name in a movie announcement:

A musical set in the legendary birthplace of jazz — New Orleans — “The Frog Princess” will introduce the newest Disney princess, Maddy, a young African-American girl living amid the charming elegance and grandeur of the fabled French Quarter.

The project drew criticism, though — particularly from the African-American community. Some people thought, for instance, that “Maddy” sounded too much like “Mammy.”

In response, Disney made some changes. And among those changes was a new name for the main character.

Clements claimed that Tiana meant “princess” in Greek, but this isn’t the case. (The princess association may have arisen from the name’s similarity to that of Princess Diana.) Rather, Tiana can be considered a short form of names that end with -tiana, like Tatiana and Christiana, or else an elaborated form of Tia.

What are your thoughts on the name Tiana?

P.S. Ron Clements also came up with the name Ariel for The Little Mermaid…

Sources:

Images: Screenshots of The Princess and the Frog

What gave the baby name Arielle a boost in 1988?

The character Arielle from the TV series "General Hospital" (1963-)
Arielle Ashton from “General Hospital“

The baby name Arielle was already on the rise when it suddenly doubled in usage in 1989:

  • 1990: 1,569 baby girls named Arielle [rank: 185th]
  • 1989: 1,530 baby girls named Arielle [rank: 185th]
  • 1988: 653 baby girls named Arielle [rank: 368th]
  • 1987: 341 baby girls named Arielle [rank: 581st]
  • 1986: 318 baby girls named Arielle [rank: 604th]

Similar spellings (like Ariele, Aurielle, Arrielle, Aryelle, and Aerielle) also saw higher usage that year.

Like most Ariel-based names, Arielle went on to reach peak usage in 1991, thanks to The Little Mermaid. But the animated film wasn’t released until November of 1989 — so it couldn’t have affected Arielle prior to 1989, and wouldn’t have affected it very much in 1989 either. (The usage of Ariel itself only increased by 41% that year.)

Instead, I think a character on the long-running ABC soap opera General Hospital was influencing the name during the last two years of the 1980s.

In October of 1988, Lady Arielle Ashton (played by actress Jane Higginson) sailed into fictional Port Charles on a yacht with her husband, Lord Larry Ashton. The man who became the ship’s mechanic, Colton Shore, happened to be Arielle’s former lover. Arielle and Colton came close to resuming their relationship, but Colton ultimately chose Felicia over Arielle, and Arielle left Port Charles (alone) in May of 1989.

What are your thoughts on the spelling Arielle? (Do you like it more or less than Ariel?)

Sources:

Image: Screenshot of General Hospital

How did “The Little Mermaid” influence baby names?

The character Ariel from the movie "The Little Mermaid" (1989)
Ariel from “The Little Mermaid“

The Little Mermaid — which marked a return to the Walt Disney company’s tried-and-true formula of creating animated musical adaptations of folktales, fairy-tales, and other well-known stories (e.g., Pinocchio, Cinderella) — was released in theaters in November of 1989.

It went on to become the ninth-highest-grossing film of the year, and kicked off the “Disney renaissance” of the 1990s.

The movie’s protagonist, a teenage mermaid named Ariel (pronounced AIR-ee-el), was the daughter of King Triton, ruler of the undersea kingdom of Atlantica.

Ariel, who had long been fascinated by the human world, fell in love with a human prince — right before rescuing him from a shipwreck.

When Ariel’s father found out that she’d had contact with a human — something that was “strictly forbidden” for merfolk — he became enraged and destroyed her large collection of human artifacts (e.g., a dinner fork, a tobacco pipe).

Distraught, Ariel decided to make a deal with Ursula the sea witch. She would be transformed into a human for three days, and, if she could get the prince to fall in love with her during that time, she would remain a human forever. If not, she would return to the ocean and become Ursula’s prisoner.

A year after The Little Mermaid came out, not only did the name Triton debut in the U.S. baby name data, but the name Ariel — which was already on the rise for baby girls (thanks to a song, a soap opera, and another soap opera) — entered the girls’ top 100 for the very first time:

Girls named ArielBoys named Ariel
19923,961 [rank: 87th]456 [rank: 472nd]
19915,411† [rank: 66th]666† [rank: 360th]
19903,607 [rank: 94th]408 [rank: 482nd]
19891,284 [rank: 209th]383 [rank: 489th]
1988911 [rank: 277th]345 [rank: 493rd]
†Peak usage

A year after that, Ariel reached peak usage (for both genders, interestingly).

Also peaking in 1991 were slew of other spellings: Aerial, Aeriel, Aeriell, Aireal, Airiel, Airielle, Areial, Areil, Arial, Arieal, Ariele, Arielle, Arriel, Arrielle, Auriel, and Ayriel.

So, how did the character come to be called Ariel?

The film’s co-director, Ron Clements, wrote a two-page treatment of The Little Mermaid in January of 1985. His treatment was based on the like-named 19th-century fairy-tale by Danish author Hans Christian Andersen. In the original story, the mermaid was nameless; in the treatment, Clements referred to the mermaid as Ariel.

Years later, Clements deduced that he’d been influenced by the 1984 film Footloose, which featured a female character named Ariel (who, like the mermaid, was a rebellious teenager).

What are your thoughts on the name Ariel? Do you like it better as a girl name or as a boy name?

P.S. The nine other Disney films released during the “renaissance” period were The Rescuers Down Under, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, The Lion King, Pocahontas, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Hercules, Mulan, and Tarzan.

P.P.S. Another mermaid movie from the 1980s that influenced U.S. baby names was Splash…

Sources:

Image: Screenshot of The Little Mermaid