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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Popularity of the baby name Barbara


Posts that mention the name Barbara

Where did the baby name Bedar come from in 1966?

The unusual name Bedar has appeared just once in the U.S. baby name data:

  • 1968: unlisted
  • 1967: unlisted
  • 1966: 5 baby girls named Bedar [debut]
  • 1965: unlisted
  • 1964: unlisted

Where did it come from?

A flower girl. Specifically, 4-year-old “Bedar Howar” — the flower girl at the August wedding of 19-year-old Luci Johnson, daughter of U.S. president Lyndon B. Johnson.

bedar, bader, baby name, 1966

But here’s the catch: Her name was actually Bader Howar. Every contemporary write-up about the wedding that I saw managed to misspelled her name.

Her father Edmond was a real estate developer of Jordanian descent; her mother Barbara was a Washington D.C. socialite and writer. In the mid-1970s, Barbara mentioned to People magazine that Bader was “named for a paternal grandmother.” (Her name is a form of Badr, which means “full moon” in Arabic.)

Bader now works as a portrait photographer in California, though she did have a brief acting career (including a small part in Pretty in Pink).

Sources:

What turned Cinnamon into a baby name in 1967?

The character Cinnamon Carter from the TV series "Mission: Impossible" (1966-1973)
Cinnamon Carter from “Mission: Impossible“

The spice name Cinnamon debuted in the U.S. baby name data in 1967:

  • 1972: 63 baby girls named Cinnamon
  • 1971: 94 baby girls named Cinnamon
  • 1970: 110 baby girls named Cinnamon
  • 1969: 202 baby girls named Cinnamon [rank: 699th]
  • 1968: 91 baby girls named Cinnamon
  • 1967: 41 baby girls named Cinnamon [debut]
  • 1966: unlisted
  • 1965: unlisted

It was the top debut name of the year and, two years later, reached the top 1,000 for the first and only time. It also gave rise to variant forms such as Cinamon, Cynnamon, and Cinnamin.

So what gave the name Cinnamon such a big boost in the late ’60s?

Cinnamon Carter, a character from the spy/action TV show Mission: Impossible (1966-1973).

Cinnamon (played by actress Barbara Bain) was a successful fashion model by day, but she was also a member of the Impossible Missions Force (IMF) — a team of secret government agents. (I’m not sure how one can be a both a public figure and a secret agent, but I guess she made it work.)

Though the character was only on the show for the first three seasons, she made a strong impression; Bain won three consecutive Emmy awards for each of those three years.

As soon as the character was off the show, the usage of the name Cinnamon started declining.

What are your thoughts on Cinnamon as a baby name? How high do you think it could have climbed in the rankings had the character remained on the show?

Sources: Mission: Impossible – Wikipedia, Should You Choose To Accept: Mission Impossible’s Barbara Bain, SSA
Image: Screenshot of Mission: Impossible

What gave the baby name Krystal a boost in 1951?

The Rosebush quads: Kenneth, Krystal, Keith, and Kristine.
Kenneth, Krystal, Keith, and Kristine in late 1956.

The baby name Krystal saw a steep rise in usage in 1951. In fact, it was one of the fastest-rising baby names that year:

  • 1953: 40 baby girls named Krystal
    • 11 (27.5%) in MI
  • 1952: 59 baby girls named Krystal
    • 15 (25.4%) in MI
  • 1951: 55 baby girls named Krystal
    • 18 (32.7%) in MI
  • 1950: 8 baby girls named Krystal
  • 1949: 9 baby girls named Krystal

As you can see, much of the usage was in the state of Michigan specifically.

What was the influence?

A set of quadruplets — Krystal, Kristine, Keith, and Kenneth — born to Kenneth and Ann Rosebush of Oakwood, Michigan, on January 10, 1951. They lived in hospital incubators for several weeks before being allowed to go home.

Photos of the K-named quads regularly appeared in the papers during the early 1950s.

It’s hard to tell whether they had any influence on the names Keith and Kenneth, which were already on the rise in the early 1950s, but it does look like the name Kristine (which was sometimes misspelled Kristene in the papers) was affected:

  • 1953: 1247 baby girls named Kristine
    • 113 (9.0%) in MI
  • 1952: 1885 baby girls named Kristine
    • 206 (10.9%) in MI
  • 1951: 1755 baby girls named Kristine
    • 186 (10.6%) in MI
  • 1950: 1247 baby girls named Kristine
    • 110 (8.8%) in MI
  • 1949: 1174 baby girls named Kristine
    • 94 (8.0%) in MI

The Rosebush family also included four older children, all girls, named Dorothy (Dottie), Jacquelyn, Barbara, and Joann.

Sources:

Mystery baby name: Tish

Graph of the usage of the baby name Tish in the U.S. since 1880
Usage of the baby name Tish

Time for another baby name mystery!

Today we’ve got Tish, which saw a distinct spike in usage in 1971. Here’s the data:

  • 1973: 25 baby girls named Tish
  • 1972: 27 baby girls named Tish
  • 1971: 63 baby girls named Tish
  • 1970: 25 baby girls named Tish
  • 1969: 33 baby girls named Tish

I do have a guess on this one — a bizarre film called The Baby Maker that came out in late 1970 and starred Barbara Hershey (a.k.a. Barbara Seagull) as Tish, “a free spirit who agrees to bear a child for a childless couple.” I can’t find any box office data on the film, though, so I can’t figure out how many people actually saw it.

A better guess would have been African-American model Tish Hammock…but the year she was being featured regularly in Jet magazine was 1969 — a bit too early for a ’71 spike.

Another guess would have been the character Clementine “Tish” Rivers from the James Baldwin novel If Beale Street Could Talk…except it wasn’t published until 1974.

Have any thoughts on this one? Any other theories?

Source: The Baby Maker (1970) – Rotten Tomatoes