Deneen is the million-dollar baby name mystery. It saw a massive spike in usage in 1964, and I had no idea why for years. Only recently have I stumbled upon a plausible explanation.
But first let’s check out the numbers. Here’s how many U.S. baby girls were named Deneen (or a variant) from 1963 to 1966, sorted by 1964 levels of usage:
| 1963 | 1964 | 1965 | 1966 | |
| Deneen | 22 | 1,604 | 421 | 223 |
| Denine | 17 | 133 | 101 | 71 |
| Daneen | 29 | 132 | 85 | 70 |
| Dineen | 10 | 68 | 43 | 35 |
| Denene | 7 | 66 | 38 | 31 |
| Denean | 7 | 58 | 61 | 40 |
| Danine | 7 | 29 | 23 | 31 |
| Danene | 12 | 24 | 18 | 11 |
| Deneane | – | 24* | 11 | 9 |
| Deneene | – | 24* | 13 | 14 |
| Danean | – | 14* | 14 | 6 |
| Deeneen | – | 12* | – | – |
| Doneen | 7 | 11 | – | 9 |
| Dennine | – | 10* | 7 | 7 |
| Deneena | – | 7* | – | – |
| Deniene | – | 7* | – | – |
| Dennen | – | 7* | – | – |
| Donene | – | 7 | – | – |
| Deaneen | – | 5* | – | – |
| Deneem | – | 5* | – | – |
| Dinene | – | 7† | – | |
| TOTALS | 118 | 2,247 | 842 | 557 |
(Deeneen, Deneena, Dennen, Deaneen, and Deneem were one-hit wonders.)
According to the state-by-state data, Deneen usage tended to be highest in the most populous states. This isn’t much of a clue, but it does tell us that the influence was national (e.g., movie, music) and not regional (e.g., college sports, local politician).
For a long time my only guess on Deneen was the same guess Hilary Parker made in her poisoned baby names post: musical duo August & Deneen. But their hit single “We Go Together” came out in 1968 — long after the 1964 baby name spike. So August & Deneen clearly isn’t the answer.
About a month ago I tried another Deneen search. This time around I found a recent thread on Deneen at the Baby Name Wizard forum. According to intel gathered by forum members, Deneen could have been popularized by a ’60s commercial for Ivory dishwashing liquid.
At first I wasn’t so sure. The only vintage Ivory commercials I could find online were for Ivory Snow laundry detergent and, while many of these did feature names (e.g., Allison, Betsy, Bonnie, Debbie, Esther, Joy, Kerry, Kimberly, Michelle, Terry) the names were never on-screen. You don’t get a spelling-specific name spike if the influence is audio-only.
Then I noticed, lower down in the thread, that someone included a link to a single Ivory dishwashing liquid commercial from 1962. The spot featured a mother-daughter pair, “Mrs. Bernard Pugar and Dana,” and their names were indeed shown on-screen for several seconds. Now this looked promising.
I’ve since tracked down a similar Ivory commercial featuring “Mrs. Blake Clark” and her daughter Nicky, though Nicky’s name was never shown on-screen. No luck finding a Deneen version yet.
So I’ll just sit tight and hope that, one day, someone uploads the commercial in question and puts this whole Deneen baby name mystery to rest. :)
In the meanwhile, some questions:
- If you were watching TV in the ’60s, do you happen recall an Ivory dishwashing liquid commercial featuring the name Deneen? (Long shot, I know.)
- What do you think of the name Deneen? Which spelling do you like best?
P.S. Djuna popped up on the baby name charts in 1964 as well. I’m declaring 1964 the year of the mysteriously trendy D-names.
