How popular is the baby name Dokken 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 Dokken.

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Popularity of the baby name Dokken


Posts that mention the name Dokken

Where did the baby name Xavion come from in 1985?

Xavion's single "Eat Your Heart Out" (1984)
Xavion single

Baby names that start with Xav– may be trendy right now, but they weren’t trendy back in the mid-1980s, when the name Xavion suddenly popped up in the U.S. baby name data:

  • 1987: unlisted
  • 1986: unlisted
  • 1985: 13 baby boys named Xavion [debut]
  • 1984: unlisted
  • 1983: unlisted

What put it there?

A Memphis-based rock/funk band called Xavion, which was apparently the first African-American rock group to be featured on MTV.

(An article about MTV programming in a late 1984 issue of Billboard magazine mentioned Xavion in a paragraph about “breakout” acts along with Bad Manners, Dokken, Grim Reaper, Iron Maiden, Whitesnake, and Zebra.)

The band is best remembered for two singles: “Eat Your Heart Out” (which almost reached the Hot 100 chart in September of 1984) and “Get Me Hot” (which reached #72 on the Hot Black Singles chart in January of 1985).

What are your thoughts on the name Xavion?

P.S. Xavion’s lead singer, Dexter Haygood, was a contestant on the first season of (the American version of) The X Factor in 2011.

Sources:

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

single flower

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.

2020s

  • (none yet)

2010s

2000s

1990s

1980s

1970s

1960s

1950s

1940s

1930s

1920s

1910s

1900s

  • (none yet)

1890s

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?

Image: Adapted from Solitary Poppy by Andy Beecroft under CC BY-SA 2.0.

[Latest update: Dec. 2023]

Where did the baby name Dokken come from in 1989?

The Dokken album "Beast from the East" (1988).
Dokken album

The unusual baby name Dokken debuted in 1989 and never came back, making it a one-hit wonder in the U.S. baby name data.

  • 1991: unlisted
  • 1990: unlisted
  • 1989: 5 baby boys named Dokken [debut]
  • 1988: unlisted
  • 1987: unlisted

Where did it come from?

My guess is the ’80s rock band Dokken, which “was a fixture on MTV in the eighties and enjoyed a string of best-selling albums through the decade.”

The band formed in 1979 and became a commercial success in the mid-1980s. The Dokken song “Dream Warriors” was featured in the slasher movie A Nightmare on Elm Street 3: Dream Warriors (1987).

In 1989, Dokken scored its first and only Grammy nomination (in the brand new “Best Metal Performance” category) with the live album Beast from the East. But — along with Faith No More, Queensrÿche, and Soundgarden — they ended up losing to Metallica.

The band was named after vocalist Don Dokken, whose Norwegian surname can be traced back to an Old Norse geographical word meaning “hollow, depression.”

…And now it’s time for the question of the day! The Dokken-like, cologne-inspired baby name Drakkar popped up in the data just a few years before Dokken did. Which late ’80s name do you prefer, Dokken or Drakkar?

Sources:

  • Dokken – Wikipedia
  • Hanks, Patrick. (Ed.) Dictionary of American Family Names. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.
  • Phillips, William and Brian Cogan. Encyclopedia of Heavy Metal Music. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2009.