How popular is the baby name Deyanne 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 Deyanne.

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Popularity of the baby name Deyanne


Posts that mention the name Deyanne

Where did the baby name Deyanne come from in 1950?

deyanne, wedding, 1950
Deyanne in Woodbury Soap Ad, 1950

Deyanne was a two-hit wonder on the U.S. baby name charts at the start of the 1950s:

  • 1952: unlisted
  • 1951: 7 baby girls named Deyanne
  • 1950: 13 baby girls named Deyanne
  • 1949: unlisted

Where did the name come from?

A New York debutante named Deyanne O’Neil Farrell.

Deyanne never appeared on the cover of Life (like Brenda Frazier) or on the cover of Jet (like Theonita Cox). But she did appear inside the December 1949 issue of Vogue. She wore a white ball gown designed by Ceil Chapman and the photo was taken by famous fashion photographer Horst P. Horst.

The New York Times announced Deyanne’s engagement the next month, and she married Herbert Miller in St. Patrick’s Cathedral the month after that.

Their wedding photos ended up being part of a marketing campaign for soap made by the Woodbury Soap Company, which regularly featured debutantes and actresses in its advertisements. The image above, for instance, came from a full-page ad in the May 8, 1950, issue of LIFE. I saw other versions of the ad in other magazines (like McCall’s) and in the newspapers (like the Pittsburgh Press) in 1950 and 1951.

The Woodbury ads featuring Deyanne are no doubt what gave the name a boost on the charts during both of those years.

And Deyanne gave one more thing a boost a few years later: Portuguese Water Dogs. In fact, she’s credited with introducing the breed to the United States in 1968. Four decades after that, the Obama family introduced the breed to the White House. (Their Portuguese Water Dogs were named Bo and Sunny.)

But let’s get back to human names now…do you like the name Deyanne? Do you like it more or less than the similar name Diane?

Sources:

What popularized the baby name Brenda in 1939?

Debutante Brenda Diana Duff Frazier on the cover of Life magazine (Nov. 1938)
Brenda Frazier

Brenda Diana Duff Frazier (1921-1982) was an American debutante who rose to fame toward the end of the Great Depression. She wasn’t from an old-money family, but she did have a $4 million trust fund, thanks to her paternal grandfather.

“By the time Frazier was ready to make her debut, most of the established charity group balls and cotillions — even the more down-market ones — rejected her application.” So Brenda’s overbearing, “embarrassingly nouveau riche” mother planned an extravagant coming-out party. It was held at the Ritz-Carlton in December of 1938, and it attracted a remarkable amount of media attention. In anticipation of the event, LIFE made Brenda a cover girl in mid-November.

The baby name Brenda was already on the rise, but all the buzz around Brenda Frazier kicked the name into high gear in 1939:

  • 1942: 7,239 baby girls named Brenda [rank: 40th]
  • 1941: 6,331 baby girls named Brenda [rank: 41st]
  • 1940: 5,442 baby girls named Brenda [rank: 42nd]
  • 1939: 2,756 baby girls named Brenda [rank: 86th]
  • 1938: 676 baby girls named Brenda [rank: 244th]
  • 1937: 233 baby girls named Brenda [rank: 423rd]
  • 1936: 163 baby girls named Brenda [rank: 511th]
  • 1935: 132 baby girls named Brenda [rank: 556th]

This was also the year that gossip columnist Walter Winchell, inspired by Frazier’s “ubiquity, her hustle, her fame,” coined the term celebutante — a portmanteau of celebrity and debutante — to describe Brenda specifically.

Over the next few years, Frazier stayed in the spotlight by appearing in various magazine advertisements, such as this Studebaker Land Cruiser ad from early 1941:

Brenda Frazier featured in a magazine ad for Studebaker cars (Jan. 1941)
Brenda Frazier in magazine ad

(Decades later, she wrote: “I found it amusing that I should be paid to recommend a particular make of car — I, who had never been permitted to drive an automobile and went everywhere by taxi or by chauffeured limousine.”)

By the middle of the century, the name Brenda was one of the most popular baby names in the nation. It ranked among the top 20 girl names from 1948 all the way to 1964.

Graph of the usage of the baby name Brenda in the U.S. since 1880
Usage of the baby name Brenda

By that time, though, Brenda Frazier’s popularity had long since waned. She went on to live a difficult life (which included eating disorders, drug and alcohol addictions, two divorces, and multiple suicide attempts) before passing away “a virtual recluse” in 1982.

In 2007, New York Magazine ranked the top 20 socialites of all time. Frazier came in 16th.

Sources:

Image: © 1938 Life

P.S. Other debutantes who’ve influenced U.S. baby names include Cobina Wright, Jr., Deyanne O’Neil Farrell, Oona O’Neill, Sharman Douglas, Theonita Cox, and Gamble Benedict.