How popular is the baby name Barbara 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 Barbara.
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Canadian actress Carrie-Anne Moss, who portrayed the character Trinity in all four Matrix movies, was born to parents Barbara and Melvyn Moss of British Columbia in August of 1967.
Why was she named Carrie-Anne?
Her mother named her after the song “Carrie-Anne,” by the Hollies. It was a last-minute change. She almost got named Jenny Rebecca, after a Barbra Streisand hit of a previous summer. A disaster narrowly averted.
“Carrie Anne,” which was released in May of 1967, peaked at #9 on Billboard‘s U.S. Hot 100 chart a couple of weeks before Moss was born. (Billboard didn’t launch a Canadian Hot 100 chart until mid-2007.)
“Jenny Rebecca,” on the other hand, was never released as a single. But it was the third track on Streisand’s best-selling album My Name Is Barbra (1965).
The news release made note of two names — Wieslawa (given to 2 baby girls) and Waclaw (given to 3 baby boys) — that were once quite popular, but today are “almost forgotten” (niemal zapomniane) in Poland.
P.S. The Polish letters L-with-a-stroke, Z-with-an-overdot, and S-with-an-accent don’t render properly on my site, so please imagine they exist in several of the above: the girl names Lucja, Róza, Jasmina, and Wieslawa, and the boy names Stanislaw, Mikolaj, Michal, Milosz, Waclaw.
According to the U.S. baby name data, the usage of Tracy increased for both boys and girls during the 1940s, ’50s, and ’60s.
The boys’ rise was probably bolstered by a pair of masculine associations: leading man Spencer Tracy (who’d become famous in the mid-1930s) and comic strip character Dick Tracy (who first appeared in the papers in the early ’30s).
The girls’ rise was likely influenced by fictional character Tracy Lord, the protagonist of the play The Philadelphia Story (1939), which was adapted for the big and small screens multiple times. Tracy Lord — a beautiful but self-centered heiress — was portrayed by Katharine Hepburn in 1940 (film), Barbara Bel Geddes in late 1950 (TV), Dorothy McGuire in late 1954 (TV), Grace Kelly in 1956 (film), and Diana Lynn in late 1959 (TV).
Notably, the 1959 televised production of The Philadelphia Story featured original music, including “Tracy’s Theme” [vid] — an instrumental song that peaked at #13 on Billboard‘s Hot 100 chart in February of 1960.
Another influence on the girls’ usage may have been AP columnist Hal Boyle, who often wrote about his daughter Tracy Ann (from the time she was adopted in 1953 until the early 1970s). Photos of Tracy Ann Boyle occasionally ran in the newspapers.
Tracy Ann Boyle (in 1959)
The name Tracy was being given more often to baby girls than to baby boys by 1954, and the girls’ usage was more than double the boys’ usage by the end of the 1950s:
Girls named Tracy
Boys named Tracy
1962
8,308 (rank: 55th)
3,340 (rank: 111th)
1961
6,987 (rank: 64th)
3,185 (rank: 119th)
1960
5,767 (rank: 84th)
2,584 (rank: 137th)
1959
3,367 (rank: 131st)
1,450 (rank: 199th)
1958
2,110 (rank: 178th)
1,249 (rank: 212th)
1957
1,966 (rank: 183rd)
1,156 (rank: 223rd)
1956
1,386 (rank: 219th)
773 (rank: 261st)
1955
936 (rank: 280th)
526 (rank: 323rd)
1954
612 (rank: 348th)
445 (rank: 338th)
1953
326 (rank: 477th)
327 (rank: 387th)
Do you know of anything else (e.g., famous people, characters, news stories) that might have helped popularize the name Tracy in the mid-20th century? (Did I miss anything?)
After ranking among the top 100 girl names in the U.S. for more than three decades, the name Monica suddenly dropped out of the top 100 in 1998:
2001: 1796 baby girls named Monica [rank: 182nd]
2000: 1,992 baby girls named Monica [rank: 167th]
1999: 2,134 baby girls named Monica [rank: 151st]
1998: 3,229 baby girls named Monica [rank: 105th]
1997: 4,223 baby girls named Monica [rank: 79th]
1996: 4,326 baby girls named Monica [rank: 82nd]
The name’s decline in usage was even steeper the following year (-34% in 1999 vs. -24% in 1998). Here’s a visual:
Usage of the baby name Monica
What was negatively influencing the name Monica in the late 1990s?
White House intern Monica Lewinsky.
U.S. President Bill Clinton, who’d been married to Hillary Clinton since 1975, began an affair with Lewinsky during his first term in office. They had a total of ten sexual encounters over the course of sixteen months (from late 1995 to early 1997).
News of the affair broke in January of 1998.
Clinton initially denied the relationship (under oath). It wasn’t until August that he finally acknowledged that he’d had “inappropriate intimate contact” with Lewinsky.
Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky
Ongoing coverage of the “Monica Lewinsky scandal” (as it was called) dominated the headlines during 1998 and, in October, the Wall Street Journal ran an article about Lewinsky’s impact on other women named Monica:
It’s as if the reputations of Monicas everywhere have been stained by the notorious Lewinsky. “Before this, everyone would say, ‘Monica — what a pretty name,'” Monica Gardner, a 34-year-old bond buyer from Arlington, Va., recalls wistfully. “Now, it’s embarrassing.”
Bill Clinton was impeached (for committing perjury and obstructing justice) in December. He was acquitted of the charges in February of 1999.
The following month, an impressive 70 million people tuned in to watch Barbara Walters interview Monica Lewinsky on 20/20. A poll conducted the next day “found that 72% of [respondents] still have a generally unfavorable impression of [Lewinsky], down just slightly from a high of 78% in September.”
Two weeks later, Lewinsky was on the cover of Time magazine. When the Time interviewer stated, “You’re probably the most famous woman in the world right now,” Lewinsky responded, “Unfortunately.”
What are your thoughts on the name Monica?
P.S. The name’s decline might have been even steeper if not for several less-controversial ’90s associations, such as fictional character Monica Geller (from Friends), tennis player Monica Seles, and mononymous R&B singer Monica (whose duet with Brandy, “The Boy Is Mine,” topped Billboard‘s Hot 100 chart for 13 weeks straight in mid-1998).
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