How popular is the baby name Bernice 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 Bernice.
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The 1965 pop song “Cara Mia” could be a secondary influence here, but I think the main influence was a single-season sitcom called The Cara Williams Show, which aired from 1964 to 1965 (30 episodes) on CBS.
The star of the show was actress Cara Williams, who played a scatterbrained character also named Cara. Fictional Cara went by two different surnames: Bridges (her married name) at home, and Wilton (her maiden name) at work. Why? Because she and her husband Frank (played by actor Frank Aletter) were co-workers at a company that forbade the employment of married couples. They therefore went to great lengths to conceal their marriage from their boss.
Cara Williams — a “perky redhead” often compared to Lucille Ball — was born Bernice Kamiat in New York City in 1925.
Because below you’ll find a long list of names that contain the letter sequence “i-c-e.” Most of these names come directly from the U.S. SSA’s baby name data.
…And, for those of you who are primarily interested in names that start with ICE, here are some extra ideas (gleaned from U.S. vital records, censuses, etc.):
Some of the above are non-traditional spellings of more common names such as Araceli, Demetrius, Isis, and Wallace.
Which ICE name do you like most? Let me know in the comments!
P.S. Two more names that have an association with ice — “ice” as in the slang term for diamonds (as opposed to the solid state of water) — are Eliantte and Avianne.
I think it’s funny that they decided to name two of the children after themselves only after already having a dozen. Maybe they were running out of ideas at that point. :)
Which of the above is your favorite? (I’d have to go with #8’s middle, “Onward.” What an interesting choice.)
In the late 1940s — long before the name Tanya (a diminutive of Tatiana) reached peak trendiness in the 1970s — several Tanya-based names popped up in the U.S. baby name data:
Girls named Latanya
Girls named Latonia
Girls named Ltanya
1955
67
10
32
1954
31
9
22
1953
24
8
11
1952
12
6
5
1951
9
8
.
1950
13
.
5
1949
7
.
9*
1948
6
6
.
1947
7*
5*
.
1946
.
.
.
*Debut
Latanya and Latonia first appeared in 1947, Ltanya in 1949, and Latonya in 1951. And other variants appeared later, including the intriguing LaTanga.
What was influencing the usage of these names?
My guess is Hollywood-based African-American fashion designer L’Tanya Griffin.
She started to become famous during the second half of the ’40s. Her name began appearing newspapers around 1946, and it was often spelled “LaTanya” and “La Tanya.” (Her birth name was Julia Bernice Hilbert, incidentally.)
In mid-1949, a specific event made L’Tanya Griffin front-page news: Her estranged husband Earl tried to assault her with a beer can full of lye at racetrack in Atlantic City. She was uninjured, but her friend Marshall Miles (former manager of boxer Joe Louis) and several other people suffered first degree burns. Worst off was Earl himself, as the lye had splashed back into his face. It got into his eyes and blinded him (not permanently, turns out).
L’Tanya was at the height of her fashion-fame during the 1950s. She was even on the cover of Jet in mid-1954. The magazine also sometimes ran pictures of her young daughter, also named L’Tanya:
L’Tanya Griffin with daughter L’Tanya
I’m not sure what became of L’Tanya Griffin after she fell out of the spotlight in the 1960s. But I did discover that one of the babies named “LaTanya” in 1949 was none other than Samuel L. Jackson’s wife LaTanya Richardson.
Do you like the name L’Tanya?
Sources:
“Acid Toss by Hubby Backfires.” New York Age 20 Aug. 1949: 1.
Kirkham, Pat and Shauna Stallworth. “”Three Strikes Against Me”: African American Women Designers.” Women Designers in the USA, 1900-2000: Diversity and Difference, ed. by Pat Kirkham, The Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts, 2000, pp. 123-144.
“Lye Hurled at Pretty Designer.” Pittsburgh Courier 20 Aug. 1949: 1.
Images: Clipping from the cover of Jet magazine (24 Jun. 1954); clipping from Jet magazine (11 Nov. 1954)
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