How popular is the baby name Decca 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 Decca.

The graph will take a few seconds to load, thanks for your patience. (Don't worry, it shouldn't take nine months.) If it's taking too long, try reloading the page.


Popularity of the Baby Name Decca


Posts that Mention the Name Decca

Blogiversary: NBN’s sweet sixteen

birthday cake

Nancy’s Baby Names was launched on March 6, 2006. So today is the blog’s birthday.

In fact, it’s the blog’s sweet sixteen!

Happy birthday, NBN. :)

Image by diapicard from Pixabay

Interesting one-hit wonder names in the U.S. baby name data

tulips

They came, they went, and they never came back!

These baby names are one-hit wonders in the U.S. baby name data. That is, they’ve only popped up once, ever, in the entire dataset of U.S. baby names (which accounts for all names given to at least 5 U.S. babies per year since 1880).

There are thousands of one-hit wonders in the dataset, but the names below have interesting stories behind their single appearance, so these are the one-hits I’m writing specific posts about. Just click on a name to read more.

1890s

1900s

  • (none yet)

1910s

1920s

1930s

1940s

1950s

1960s

1970s

1980s

1990s

2000s

2010s

2020s

  • (none yet)

As I discover (and write about) more one-hit wonders in the data, I’ll add the names/links to this page. In the meanwhile, do you have any favorite one-hit wonder baby names?

P.S. You might also be interested in this list of the top one-hit wonder baby names since 1880…

Where did the baby name Decca come from?

Decca advert from the of 1955.

In the mid-1950s, the name Decca was a one-hit wonder in the U.S. baby name data:

  • 1958: unlisted
  • 1957: unlisted
  • 1956: 5 baby girls named Decca [debut]
  • 1955: unlisted
  • 1954: unlisted

The reason?

My guess is the famous record company Decca. I don’t have a specific reason why it would have emerged in the data in that particular year, but around that time they were putting out popular artists like Sammy Davis Jr., Ella Fitzgerald, Bobby Darin, Bing Crosby, Louis Armstrong, Tex Williams, Buddy Holly, and Bill Haley (of “Rock Around the Clock” fame).

The American branch of the British record company Decca was launched in 1934. The British company was created in 1929, but not from scratch — it began as a piece of a much older music company that had been sold off.

The older company was called Barnett Samuel and Sons (est. 1832). It was a family business that originally made musical instruments like banjos and pianos. Only in 1914 did the company begin making portable gramophones under the trade name “Decca,” which one of the Samuels had coined by taking the easy-to-pronounce word Mecca and changing it to Decca, using the “D” from Dulcephone (another of the company’s disk-playing products).

The Decca label is still around today — it’s part of Universal Music Group — but it’s nowhere near as prevalent as it used to be.

What do you think of “Decca” as a baby name?

Sources: Decca Records – Wikipedia, Barnett Samuel and Sons – Grace’s Guide, Explanation of the Word “Decca” – G&S Discography
Image from the Dec. 31, 1955, issue of Billboard.