How popular is the baby name Clarence in the United States right now? How popular was it historically? Find out using the graph below! Plus, check out all the blog posts that mention the name Clarence.
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Grammy-winning singer and Oscar-winning actor Burl Ives was born in rural Illinois in 1909. His birth name? Burl Icle Ivanhoe Ives.
I don’t know the story behind his unique given names, but I do know that his parents, Levi Franklin (“Frank”) and Cordellia (“Dellie”), gave several of their six other children interesting names as well:
Audry Jane, b. 1899
Artie Morris, b. 1901
Clarence Estie, b. 1903
Argola Marie, b. 1906
Burl Icle Ivanhoe, b. 1909
Lilburn Verger, b. 1914
Norma, b. 1919
(During that area, the next-door state of Missouri had a community called Argola — I wonder if that’s where Argola Marie’s name came from…?)
Today, Burl Ives may be best remembered as the voice of Sam the Snowman in the 1964 stop-motion TV movie Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer — the longest-running Christmas special in history.
The baby name Rosalita first popped up in the U.S. baby name data in 1943:
1945: 21 baby girls named Rosalita
1944: 36 baby girls named Rosalita [peak]
1943: 19 baby girls named Rosalita [debut]
1942: unlisted
1941: unlisted
Where did it come from?
A country song called “Rosalita” by Al Dexter and His Troopers. Dexter wrote the song in 1942, but the release was delayed until 1943 due to the wartime musicians’ strike.
Here’s the song:
The lyrics (Rosalita, my little rose of the rancho) suggest that the name means “little rose” in Spanish, and this is somewhat true. Rosalita is a diminutive of the name Rosalía, which is based on the Latin word for “rose,” rosa. The actual word for “little rose” in Spanish, though, is rosita (the diminutive of rosa).
Thinking “Rosalita” would be a big hit, Dexter offhandedly wrote and recorded a song called “Pistol Packin’ Mama” for the reverse side of the record. “Rosalita” did well, but not nearly as well as “Pistol Packin’ Mama,” which ended up becoming Dexter’s best-known song. That said, “Rosalita” did reach #1 on Billboard’s country music chart — at that time called the “Most Played Juke Box Folk Records” chart — in March of 1944.
What do you think of the name Rosalita?
P.S. Al Dexter’s birth name was Clarence Albert Poindexter.
Source: Meet the Artist: Biographical Sketches of Leading Performing Artists with Listings of Their Recordings of BMI-licensed Songs. New York: Broadcast Music, Inc., 1952.
Years ago, I discovered three documents with relatively complete lists of births for the city of Providence, Rhode Island, for the years 1866, 1867, and 1868. I’ve already created Providence’s baby name rankings for 1866 and 1867 using the first two documents, and today (finally!) I’ve got the third set of rankings for you.
Let’s start with some stats:
1,762 babies were born in Providence in 1868, by my count. According to the introduction of the document I’m using a source, however, the total number is 1,866. I don’t know how to account for this discrepancy.
1,617 of these babies (791 girls and 826 boys) had names that were known at the time of publication. The other 145 babies got blank spaces. Either their names hadn’t been registered yet, or they hadn’t been named yet, or perhaps these babies died young and never received a name.
284 unique names (143 girl names and 141 boy names) were shared among these 1,617 babies.
And now, on to the names!
Top 5
A quick look at the top 5 girl names and boy names in Providence in 1868:
Top baby girl names
Top baby boy names
1. Mary 2. Catherine 3. Sarah 4. Ellen 5. Margaret
1. John 2. William 3. James 4. Charles 5. George
All Girl Names
Mary, 149 baby girls
Catherine, 39
Sarah, 38
Ellen, 31
Margaret, 28
Elizabeth, 25
Alice, 24
Anna, 20
Ann, 16
Emma, 14
Eliza, 13
Clara & Martha, 11 each (tie)
Hannah & Lucy, 10 each (tie)
Bridget, Grace, Jennie, Julia & Maria, 9 each (5-way tie)
Annie, Florence, Jane, Minnie & Susan, 8 each (5-way tie)
Agnes, Caroline, Cora, Ella & Harriet, 7 each (5-way tie)
Back when sea voyages were the only way to reach distant lands, many babies ended up being born aboard ships. And many of these ship-born babies were given names that reflected the circumstances of their birth. A good portion of them, for instance, were named after the ships upon which they were born.
I’ve gathered hundreds of these ship-inspired baby names over the years, and I think it’s finally time to post what I’ve found…
A
Abergeldie:
Emma Abergeldie Walsh, born in 1884
Abernyte:
Eva Abernyte Congdon, born in 1875
Abington:
Herbert Bealie Abington Tait, born in 1884
Abyssinia:
Abyssinia Louise Juhansen, born in 1870
Abyssinia Elfkin, born in 1872
Louise Abyssinia Bellanger, born in 1874
Achilles:
John Achilles Denchey, born in 1871
Actoea:
U. Actoea Jones, born in 1868
Adriatic:
John Adriatic Gateley Collins, born in 1879
Adriatic O’Loghlin Gould, born in 1880
Agnes Adriatic Cook, born in 1880
Agamemnon:
Frederick Agamemnon Dingly, born in 1876
Alaska:
Mary Alaska Magee, born in 1884
Alcester:
Gertrude Alcester Dart, born in 1884
Alcinous:
Mary Duncan Alcinosa Greenwood, born in 1887
Aldergrove:
Aldergrove Andrew Fullarton Feathers, born in 1875
He in turn gave his name to Medford, Minnesota, in the 1850s. His father, Englishman William K. Colling, was an early Minnesota settler who “said that he had a son who was born on board the ship Medford, and was named Medford, in honor of the ship, and proposed that the town should be named Medford in honor of the boy.”
P.S. Hundreds of other babies have been named after ships that were making headlines (e.g., the Titanic, the Lusitania, the Andrea Doria) around the time they were born.
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