How popular is the baby name Dawn 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 Dawn.

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Popularity of the baby name Dawn


Posts that mention the name Dawn

What popularized the baby name Venetia in the late 1950s?

Actress Venetia Stevenson (1938-2022)
Venetia Stevenson

According to the U.S. baby name data, the name Venetia — which was the fastest-rising baby name of 1956 — saw its highest usage in the late 1950s and early 1960s.

  • 1963: 28 baby girls named Venetia
  • 1962: 45 baby girls named Venetia
  • 1961: 56 baby girls named Venetia
  • 1960: 89 baby girls named Venetia
  • 1959: 84 baby girls named Venetia
  • 1958: 99 baby girls named Venetia
  • 1957: 84 baby girls named Venetia
  • 1956: 45 baby girls named Venetia
  • 1955: 7 baby girls named Venetia
  • 1954: 11 baby girls named Venetia

What was drawing attention to the name during those years?

Pin-up model and actress Venetia (pronounced ven-EE-sha) Stevenson.

In August of 1955, several memorable photos of 17-year-old Venetia and her boyfriend, actor Russ Tamblyn, were published in Life magazine. (In all four photos, acrobatic Russ was upside-down, usually in mid-air.)

Russ Tamblyn and Venetia Stevenson (in 1955)
Russ & Venetia

Several months later, on Valentine’s Day of 1956, the couple got married at the Wayfarers Chapel in Palos Verdes, California.

They were in the news again when they divorced in April of the following year.

In mid-1957, television host Ed Sullivan teamed up with Popular Photography magazine to find the “Most Photogenic Girl in the World.” The winner? Venetia Stevenson, who beat out 1,691 other contenders. She was presented with an award on an episode of The Ed Sullivan Show in early August, then featured on the cover of Popular Photography in September.

Venetia Stevenson in "Popular Photography magazine (Sept. 1957)
Venetia in “Popular Photography“

From 1958 to 1961, Venetia appeared on about a dozen TV shows (including Cheyenne, Colt .45, and 77 Sunset Strip) and in around 10 films (including one in which she co-starred with Audie Murphy).

She quit acting upon marrying Don Everly of The Everly Brothers in 1962. (She’d met Don and Phil on Ed Sullivan.)

Venetia Stevenson was born Joanna Venetia Invicta Stevenson in London in 1938 to film director Robert Stevenson and actress Anna Lee. (Her birth was reported in the papers, and there was a corresponding spike in the number of baby girls named Venetia in England and Wales that year.) The Stevenson family relocated to Hollywood in 1939.

The Latin word “Venetia” originally referred to an ancient region in northeastern Italy (roughly equivalent to the modern region of Veneto). The region was named after its inhabitants, the Veneti.

What are your thoughts on name Venetia?

P.S. During the 1960s, Venetia Stevenson and Don Everly welcomed three children: Stacy Dawn, Erin Invicta, and Edan Donald. Erin, who was in a tumultuous relationship with Guns N’ Roses frontman Axl Rose for several years, inspired Rose to write the hit song “Sweet Child o’ Mine” (1988).

P.P.S. Here’s a suspicious fact: In the spring of 1959, Don Everly and his first wife, Mary Sue, welcomed a baby named Venetia Ember. Where did her first name come from? “Venetia Stevenson, whom Don had met in New York when the brothers were there for an Ed Sullivan gig in 1957.”

Sources:

Images: Clippings from Silver Screen magazine (Oct. 1956), Life magazine (1 Aug. 1955), and Popular Photography magazine (Sept. 1957)

What gave the baby name Candida a boost in 1971?

Tony Orlando and Dawn's album "Candida" (1970)
Dawn album

According to the U.S. baby name data, the name Candida — which comes from the Latin word candidus, meaning “shining white” — saw a jump in usage (and entered the top 1,000 for the first time) in 1971:

  • 1973: 163 baby girls named Candida [rank: 802nd]
  • 1972: 170 baby girls named Candida [rank: 798th]
  • 1971: 222 baby girls named Candida [rank: 687th]
  • 1970: 95 baby girls named Candida
  • 1969: 30 baby girls named Candida

What gave it a boost that year?

The song “Candida” (pronounced kan-DEE-dah), which was sung by Tony Orlando…but credited to a non-existent group called Dawn.

(Orlando, an executive at Columbia Records, recorded the song for a competitor, Bell Records. Not wanting to jeopardize his career, he asked that Bell not reveal his name. “Dawn” was chosen because it was the name of the daughter of Bell executive Steve Wax.)

“Candida” was released in July of 1970. It peaked at #3 on Billboard‘s Hot 100 chart in early October.

Here’s what it sounds like:

In an interview, one of the co-writers of the song, Toni Wine, explained how she came up with the name Candida:

We knew we wanted a Spanish girl’s name. Rosita had been taken. Juanita was a hit. Maria had happened. We knew we wanted to write a Latin-flavored song […] We needed a three-syllable word, and all those girls were gone. So Candida had been a name that I had toyed with, and there she became a reality.

The name of the fictitious group also influenced expectant parents: Dawn, already a top-100 girl name, entered the girls’ top 20 for the first time in 1970.

Speaking of Dawn…after it scored a second #1 hit, “Knock Three Times,” Tony Orlando decided to give up his day job and make Dawn a reality. He recruited a pair of backup singers, Telma Hopkins and Joyce Vincent Wilson, and the three of them started touring.

Telma Hopkins, Tony Orlando, and Joyce Vincent Wilson on the "Tony Orlando and Dawn Show" (1975)
Telma Hopkins, Tony Orlando, and Joyce Vincent Wilson

Together, the trio scored two more #1 hits:

  • “Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Ole Oak Tree” (1973), as Dawn featuring Tony Orlando, and
  • “He Don’t Love You (Like I Love You)” (1975), as Tony Orlando and Dawn.

They also hosted a musical variety series, The Tony Orlando and Dawn Show, which was broadcast on CBS from mid-1974 until late 1976. The New York Times described the series as “mildly hip, in a safe middle-of-the-road sort of way. It’s slick. It’s disarmingly hokey. Imagine, if you will, Sonny & Cher filtered through Lawrence Welk.”

While the show was on the air, the baby names Tony, Orlando, Telma, and Candida all saw discernible (if slight) upticks in usage.

What are your thoughts on the name Candida? Would you use it?

P.S. The name Telma saw another uptick while Telma Hopkins, who went on to become an actress, was starring on the sitcom Getting By (1993-1994).

Sources:

Second image: Screenshot of The Tony Orlando and Dawn Show (episode from 1975)

What gave the baby name Dawn a boost in 1964?

The Four Seasons' album "Dawn (Go Away) and 11 Other Great Songs" (1964)
Four Seasons album

According to the U.S. baby name data, the name Dawn saw a significant increase in usage in the mid-1960s:

  • 1966: 13,602 baby girls named Dawn [rank: 24th]
  • 1965: 13,341 baby girls named Dawn [rank: 26th]
  • 1964: 12,614 baby girls named Dawn [rank: 33rd]
  • 1963: 8,416 baby girls named Dawn [rank: 52nd]
  • 1962: 8,980 baby girls named Dawn [rank: 50th]

Why?

Because of the Four Seasons song “Dawn (Go Away),” in which the narrator speaks to a female named Dawn (who’s as “pretty as a midsummer’s morn”).

Here’s what it sounds like:

The song was released as a single in January of 1964. From late February to early March, for three weeks straight, it ranked #3 on Billboard‘s Hot 100 chart. (The two songs that prevented it from climbing any higher were both Beatles songs: “I Want to Hold Your Hand” and “She Loves You.”)

What are your thoughts on the name Dawn? (Do you like it more or less than Sherry?)

Update, Feb. 2025: Thank you to Randi for mentioning a second possible influence: actress Dawn Wells, who played Mary Ann on the sitcom Gilligan’s Island, which premiered in September of 1964.

Sources: Dawn (Go Away) – Wikipedia, Billboard Hot 100 for the week of 22 Feb. 1964, Gilligan’s Island – Wikipedia, SSA

What gave the baby name Ezekiel a boost in 2017?

Football player Ezekiel Elliott
Ezekiel Elliott

The baby name Ezekiel, which has been on the rise since the late 1980s, saw higher-than-expected usage in 2017 specifically:

Boys named Ezekiel (USA)Boys named Ezekiel (Texas)
20194,932 [rank: 71st]697 (14.1%)
20184,363 [rank: 87th]594 (13.6%)
20174,773 [rank: 82nd]754 (15.8%)
20163,401 [rank: 121st]444 (13.1%)
20152,811 [rank: 146th]287 (10.2%)

What caused the uptick?

My guess is football player Ezekiel “Zeke” Elliott, who was chosen fourth overall by the Dallas Cowboys in the 2016 NFL draft.

During his rookie season (2016-17), the running back was the top rusher in the league with 1,631 yards. (Before this, the only Cowboy to rush for more than 1,000 yards as a rookie was Tony Dorsett in the late 1970s.) He also scored 15 touchdowns.

In January of 2017, Elliott was selected to participate in his first Pro Bowl alongside teammate (and fellow rookie) Dak Prescott.

Ezekiel Elijah Elliott was born in Illinois in 1995. How did he come to have his name? Here’s how his father, Stacy Elliott, told the story:

[Ezekiel’s mother Dawn] had a vision of the Mother Plane, and when she described what she saw I went to the Book of Ezekiel and what she described fit what the book said. So she named him Ezekiel after that great prophet and Elijah after Elijah Muhammad.

What are your thoughts on the name Ezekiel?

Sources:

Image: Adapted from Ezekiel Elliott 2016 by Keith Allison under CC BY-SA 2.0.