How popular is the baby name Billy 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 Billy.
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Jonathan Jasper “Jack” Sullivan married Bertha Phillips in early 1909. The North Carolina farm couple went on to have sixteen children — nine sons and seven daughters. Their names, in order, were…
Cretta (born in 1910)
Leland (1912)
Rosa (1913)
Woodrow (1916)
Wilmar (1918)
Joseph (1919)
Dorothy (1921)
Virginia (1923)
Irving (1924)
Blanche (1925)
C.D. (1927)
Geraldine (1928)
Marverine (1930)
Billy (1932)
Tom (1934)
Gene (1938)
Here’s more about Gene’s name:
Gene Autry Sullivan, the youngest of the children and the one who organizes the [family] reunion each year, said he was told he was named after legendary cowboy movie star Gene Autry “because his parents had run out of names by then.”
A few weeks ago, I got an email from a reader looking for lists of old-fashioned double names. She was aiming for names like Thelma Dean, Eula Mae, and Gaynell — names that would have sounded trendy in the early 1900s. She also mentioned that she’d started a list of her own.
So I began scouring the interwebs. I tracked down lists of old-fashioned names, and lists of double names…but I couldn’t find a decent list of double names that were also old-fashioned.
I loved the idea of such a list, though, so I suggested that we work together to create one. She generously sent me the pairings she’d collected so far, and I used several different records databases to find many more.
I restricted my search to names given to girls born in the U.S. from 1890 to 1930. I also stuck to double names that I found written as single names, because it’s very likely that these pairings were used together in real life (i.e., that they were true double names and not merely first-middle pairings).
Pairings that seemed too timeless, like Maria Mae and Julia Rose, were omitted. I also took out many of the pairings that feature now-trendy names — think Ella, Emma, and Lucy — because they just don’t sound old-fashioned anymore (though they would have a few decades ago).
The result isn’t exhaustive, but it’s a decent sampling of real-life, old-fashioned double names. I’ve organized them by second name, and I also added links to popularity graphs for names that were in the SSA data during the correct time period (early 1900s).
I spotted plenty of other combinations that just didn’t happen to be written as single names in the records, so here’s a handy dandy little table to cover some of the other existing combinations…
I’d figured out the causes of similar spikes for similar names (Kaleena, Kaelin, Katina), but hadn’t gotten around to Kalene yet.
So I did some research. And I didn’t come up with anything useful until I found myself on the Kalene page of a random baby name site where several people happened to mention the same Hooked on Phonics commercial:
“…I seen a Hooked on Phonics Commercial…”
“…my mom got it off of the hooked on phonics commercial…”
“…I too saw the name on the Hooked On Phonics commercial…”
“…My mom got it off the commercial in the 1990’s…”
…”My mom named me Kalene because she saw it on tv…”
“…my name was originally Christie but my mom saw a ‘hooked on phonics’ commercial about a month after i was born and she changed my name…”
One of my favorite things ever is discovering cheesy pop culture enshrined in the baby name data (excellent example: Kebrina), so finding out that a Hooked on Phonics commercial influenced U.S. baby names was pretty epic for me.
Since that point, I’ve been searching for that specific Hooked on Phonics commercial featuring Kalene.
On YouTube I found a segment of a Hooked on Phonics commercial with a Cindy Brady-esque little girl. She seemed promising…but the segment didn’t include her name on-screen.
That said, I did find a discussion thread from the 1990s — a cool piece of internet history in and of itself — that independently verified the existence of a Hooked on Phonics commercial featuring a girl named Kalene. So that was helpful.
(The search for a decades-old commercial is reminding me of our adventures with Deneen.)
So I’m not sure whether or not we’ve found Kalene yet, but one of the other Hooked on Phonics commercials I saw spotlighted a girl named Kia:
And, just like Kalene, the name Kia saw its highest-ever usage in 1993:
1995: 211 baby girls named Kia [rank: 899th]
1994: 229 baby girls named Kia [rank: 859th]
1993: 344 baby girls named Kia [rank: 649th] – peak usage
1992: 247 baby girls named Kia [rank: 813th]
1991: 253 baby girls named Kia [rank: 809th]
(South Korean company Kia Motors began selling cars in the U.S. during the final months of 1993, but I doubt this had much impact on the name.)
…So now we have two Hooked on Phonics-influenced baby names. Amazing.
Question of the Day: Do you remember any other names from old Hooked on Phonics commercials? The company was advertising heavily on TV back in the 1990s — that much I remember — but I can’t recall any specific names from the commercials. Please leave a comment if you can think of any!
UPDATE, Nov. 2022: Kalene has been identified! (Thank you to reader Ellyn for the help!)
We’ve unearthed a Hooked on Phonics commercial featuring several different children, including the little blonde girl with pigtails. Turns out that her name is indeed Kalene!
Kia was also in the commercial:
The other children were three boys named Blake, Billy, and Adam.
Oodles of multiples — eight sets of twins, one set of triplets, six sets of quadruplets, and one set of quintuplets — were featured in an early 1944 issue of LIFE magazine. Most of these multiples had been born in the 1920s and 1930s.
Curious about the names? I knew you would be! Here they are, along with ages and other details.
Twins:
Marjorie and Mary Vaughan, 19.
Lois and Lucille Barnes, 21.
Betty and Lenore Wade, early 20s.
Robert “Bobby” and William “Billy” Mauch, 22.
They had starred in the 1937 movie The Prince and the Pauper.
Blaine and Wayne Rideout, 27.
They had been track stars at the University of North Texas in the late 1930s along with another set of twins, Elmer and Delmer Brown.
Charles and Horace Hildreth, 41.
Horace was elected Governor of Maine later the same year.
Ivan and Malvin Albright, 47.
Auguste and Jean Piccard, 60.
“Honors as the world’s most distinguished pair of twins must go to Jean and Auguste Piccard, stratosphere balloonists, who are so identical that not everyone realizes there are two of them.”
Triplets:
Diane Carol, Elizabeth Ann, and Karen Lynn Quist, 11 months.
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