How popular is the baby name Deirdre 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 Deirdre.
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Welcome to mystery week! This is the first of 5 posts featuring baby names that saw sudden popularity increases that I can’t quite figure out. Maybe you guys can help?
In 1980, over 100 baby girls were suddenly given the name Sumiko (or some variant thereof):
Name
1979
1980
1981
1982
Sumiko
5
31
7
5
Semiko
–
23*
8
–
Samika
7
22
20
14
Sameka
12
21
12
9
Sumeka
–
14*
–
–
Sumika
–
11*
–
–
Semeka
–
8
7
6
Sameko
–
7*
–
–
Samica
–
7
–
–
Semico
–
7*
–
–
Simeko
–
7*
–
–
Sumeko
–
7*
–
–
Semeko
–
6*
–
–
Semika
–
6
7
7
Sameika
–
5*
–
–
*Debut
What prompted the Sumiko spike? I’m not sure.
The various spellings suggest that people were hearing the name, but not seeing it written down (as with Kasara and Deirdre). So the source is likely to be a song, a movie, or a TV show.
The only possibility I’ve come up with so far is a minor character from The Young and The Restless named Sumiko. According to various soap opera websites, Sumiko was a cult leader (!) who began appearing on the show in early 1980.
I discovered the RTÉ Radio 1 documentary One Hundred Years of Names (2009) a long time ago. Finally I’ve had a chance to listen to the entire 40-minute program.
It’s pretty good — I like how it tells the story of how Irish names have been revived in Ireland.
Because, back in the late 1800s and early 1900s, Irish names were not being used in Ireland, at least not officially. I think this fact would surprise a lot of people. The vast majority of children were given non-Irish names (e.g., Katherine, Rose, John) though some did use the Irish versions of their names in everyday life.
Around the 1930s, a handful Irish names (e.g., Seán, Séamus) began gaining traction. This was thanks to the efforts of those trying to revive Irish such as Éamon de Valera, who later became president of Ireland. (Éamon’s wife, born in 1878, went by Sinéad but was officially a Jane.)
The use of Irish names increased, little by little, over the next few decades.
With the 1970s came a lot more name variety, thanks to Gerard Slevin’s 1974 revision of Rev. Patrick Woulfe’s 1923 book Irish Names for Children. An Irish genealogist interviewed in the documentary said this revision was “quite influential, it was probably the only book on bookshelves at that time on Irish names.”
Since the 1990s, both the popularity and the variety of Irish names in Ireland have continued to increased. The narrator of the documentary summed it up well when she said that, nowadays, “names like Deirdre, Róisín, Gráinne are so familiar, we’d nearly forget they’re revived names.”
Interesting stuff, no?
The documentary is worth a listen if you’re a fan of Irish names. Or if you simply want to hear some Irish name pronunciations, as a bunch of Irish names — Cian (kee-an), Aoife (ee-fa), Ciara (kee-ra), Caoimhe (kwee-va), Niamh (nee-av), Saoirse (sir-sha), Sadhbh (sive), Róisín (ro-sheen), Aoibhinn/Aoibheann (ee-veen), etc. — are mentioned about 10 minutes in.
According to the U.S. baby name data, something unusual happened to the name Norita in the 1930s:
1939: 34 baby girls named Norita
1938: 47 baby girls named Norita
1937: 155 baby girls named Norita [rank: 532nd]
1936: 19 baby girls named Norita
1935: 89 baby girls named Norita [rank: 713th]
1934: 7 baby girls named Norita
1933: 6 baby girls named Norita
See how the usage spiked twice? Interesting, isn’t it?
A double-spike requires a double-explanation, and one of those explanations I’ve figured out. The other I’m still working on.
Norita’s 1935 spike
Norita’s first spike can be traced back to a contest, believe it or not. Contests were all the rage in the mid-1930s according to Newsweek:
Almost every week, radio stations and newspapers announce new contests. Prizes of money, automobiles, and round-the-world trips incite listeners and readers to send in slogans and 50-word essays written on soap wrappers and cigar bands.
This particular contest, sponsored by Gold Medal Flour, was woven into the storyline of an old time radio show called “Betty and Bob.” After characters Betty and Bob Drake found a orphaned baby girl at their doorstep on Christmas Eve of 1934, they asked their audience to help choose a name for her.
Gold Medal Flour magazine advertisements from early 1935 gave detailed descriptions of the baby — “golden hair,” “blue eyes,” “happy disposition” — and hints on picking a name, which they stressed should be “original” and “unique.”
Thousands of cash prizes were offered, including a $10,000 grand prize. Here’s the full list (and what the prizes would be worth in today’s dollars):
1st – $10,000 (equivalent to $170,713.14 in 2013)
2nd – $1,500 ($25,606.97)
3rd – $1,000 ($17,071.31)
4th – $500 ($8,535.66)
5th – $250 ($4,267.83)
6th – $200 ($3,414.26)
7th – $150 ($2,560.70)
8th – $100 ($1,707.13)
9th – $75 ($1,280.35)
10th – $25 ($426.78)
11th – $15 ($256.07)
12th – $10 ($170.71)
13th – $7 ($119.50)
14th – $5 ($85.36)
1,000+ other entrants – $1 each ($17.07)
That’s a lot of money, especially when you consider that the nation was still trying to pull itself out of the Great Depression in the mid-1930s.
Hundreds of thousands of people entered the contest, which ran until mid-February. Some people really went out of their way to catch the attention of the judges:
One woman painstakingly embroidered a pillow with a name on it and could not understand why she got no prize. She even claimed the work had damaged her eyesight. A man sent an 8-foot, electrically-wired lighthouse with the entry-name over its door. A third contestant contributed a huge doll in an expensive bassinet; a nameplate hung on the doll’s neck.
More than 50,000 people suggested the name Goldie (a nod to Gold Medal Flour). Another 57,000 suggested Betty-Jane.
But only Mrs. E. M. Nelson of Minnesota suggested the grand prize-winning name Norita, a name she’d created from an Old English word for “foster child,” norie (also spelled nory, nurry, etc.). The word ultimately comes from Old French nourrir, meaning “nourish.”
The only other prize-winner I know of was a woman named Martha Hunt of Washington state who submitted the name “Adolla” and received $250 (5th place).
According to a newspaper article from 1942, the Gold Medal Flour “Radio’s Nameless Mystery Baby” contest was General Mills’ second-most successful contest ever. Seven years later, the company was still receiving entries.
Norita’s 1937 spike
The second spike was higher than the first — 155 babies this time, versus 89 in 1935 — but I haven’t been able to pinpoint the cause.
One thing I can tell you about the 1937 spike is that, in contrast to the 1935 spike, it inspired a lot of variant forms:
(Noreda, Norrita, Noreeta, Noreita, Noritta, Norietta, Norreta, and Norretta were one-hit wonders.)
A sudden increase in variant forms always points me to an audio source — something that has a lot of people hearing a name, but not seeing it written down. This forces people to come up with their own spellings. The Deirdre and Kasara spikes were caused by audio sources, for instance.
So the second Norita spike was likely caused either by radio or by a movie. (Television wasn’t widely adopted until well into the 1950s.)
One other thing I can tell you is that the 1937 spike was localized, just like the 1935 spike. In 1935, most of the babies named Norita were born in the Midwest:
12 Noritas in Minnesota (1935)
9 Noritas in Wisconsin (1935)
7 Noritas in Indiana (1935)
6 Noritas in Illinois, Michigan, and Ohio (1935)
5 Noritas in Texas (1935)
The story of a Minnesota woman winning $10,000 by inventing the name “Norita” was probably a lot bigger in this region than elsewhere.
Skipping ahead two years, we see something similar:
17 Noritas in Ohio (1937)
16 Noritas in Pennsylvania (1937)
14 Noritas in California (1937)
11 Noritas in Illinois (1937)
10 Noritas in Texas (1937)
9 Noritas in Indiana and Minnesota (1937)
5 Noritas in Michigan, Oregon, and West Virginia (1937)
The localization isn’t quite as strong, but over 20% of the 1937 Noritas were born in Ohio and Pennsylvania, which is notable.
Thoughts?
My best guess is that the second spike is related to the “Betty and Bob” radio show somehow. Perhaps baby Norita became an on-air character in 1937?
But I have no clue why the name was disproportionately popular in Ohio and Pennsylvania.
Do you have any ideas?
Also: Do you like the name Norita? Would you ever consider using it for a baby?
All these names together these pointed me to Deirdre as the likely source.
So what happened to the Irish name Deirdre that year?
1946: 121 baby girls named Deirdre (rank: 742nd)
1945: 78 baby girls named Deirdre (rank: 852nd)
1944: 67 baby girls named Deirdre (rank: 948th)
1943: 29 baby girls named Deirdre
1942: 37 baby girls named Deirdre
From 1943 to 1944, usage more than doubled, pushing Deirdre into the top 1,000 for the very first time.
Other variants (e.g. Dierdre, Deidra) also saw increased usage in 1944. One of them, Deidre, even achieved top-1,000 status in 1945.
So what caused the great Deirdre-spike of 1944?
I think it was the Bette Davis film Old Acquaintance, which was released in November of 1943. It featured a character named Deirdre Drake (played by actress Dolores Moran).
I’m not 100% sure the movie was the cause, but the name of Bette Davis’s character, Kit — short for Katherine — also saw an increase in usage in 1944:
1946: 24 baby girls named Kit
1945: 27 baby girls named Kit
1944: 25 baby girls named Kit
1943: 14 baby girls named Kit
1942: 12 baby girls named Kit
So I think Old Acquaintance is a decent guess.
Do you have any other ideas?
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