How popular is the baby name Gale 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 Gale.
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The name Corliss, which was primarily given to baby girls during the 20th century, re-emerged in the U.S. baby name data as a boy name in 1994:
1996: 5 baby boys named Corliss
1995: 17 baby boys named Corliss
1994: 22 baby boys named Corliss [peak usage]
1993: unlisted
1992: unlisted
Why?
Because of college basketball player Corliss Williamson, who attended the University of Arkansas from 1992 to 1995.
Corliss, a 6-foot-7 power forward, helped the Arkansas Razorbacks win their very first NCAA championship (against the Duke Blue Devils) in April of 1994. In fact, Corliss was named the Most Outstanding Player of the Final Four.
A week later, he was featured on the cover of Sports Illustrated.
He led the Razorbacks to a second championship game the following season, but the team ultimately lost (to the UCLA Bruins).
Corliss forwent his senior year in order to enter the 1995 NBA draft. He was selected in the first round by the Sacramento Kings, and ended up playing for four different teams over the course of his 14-season professional career.
What are your thoughts on Corliss as a boy name?
P.S. Of the five names listed twice in the top returns post, Corliss is the only one that appeared both as a girl name (in 1943) and as a boy name (in 1994). The other four double-entry names are Ammie, Eulalia, Gale, and Victory.
We know which names debuted most impressively in the U.S. baby name data, but what about the baby names that returned most impressively? That is, the names that re-emerged in the data (after an absence of at least one year) with the highest number of babies?
Below are the most popular re-emerging names for every single year on record, after the second.
Here’s the format: Girl names are on the left, boy names are on the right, and the numbers represent single-year usage (following an absence). In 1971, for instance, the girl name Devonia returned to the data with 22 babies, and the boy name Idris returned to the data with 21 babies.
(The Social Security Administration’s baby name data isn’t perfect, but it does get a lot more accurate starting in the late 1930s because, according to the SSA, “many people born before 1937 never applied for a Social Security card, so their names are not included in our data.”)
I’ve already written about some of these names, and I’ll write about others in the future. In the meantime, feel free to beat me to it! Leave a comment and let us know what popularized Jory in 1950, or Marnita in 1961, or Catlin in 1984…
“Everly” is hot…”Beverly” is not. It’s a one-letter difference between fashionable and fusty.
If you’re sensitive to style, you’ll prefer Everly. It fits with today’s trends far better than Beverly does.
But if you’re someone who isn’t concerned about style, or prefers to go against style, then you may not automatically go for Everly. In fact, you may be more attracted to Beverly because it’s the choice that most modern parents would avoid.
If you’ve ever thought about intentionally giving your baby a dated name (like Debbie, Grover, Marcia, or Vernon) for the sake of uniqueness within his/her peer group — if you have no problem sacrificing style for distinctiveness — then this list is for you.
Years ago, the concept of “contrarian” baby names came up in the comments of a post about Lois. Ever since then, creating a collection of uncool/contrarian baby names has been on my to-do list.
Finally, last month, I experimented with various formulas for pulling unstylish baby names out of the SSA dataset. Keeping the great-grandparent rule in mind, I aimed for names that would have been fashionable among the grandparents of today’s babies. The names below are the best results I got.
Interestingly, thirteen of the names above — Bobbie, Cary, Dale, Jackie, Jimmie, Jody, Kerry, Kim, Lynn, Robin, Sandy, Tracey, Tracy — managed to make both lists.
Now some questions for you…
Do you like any of these names? Would you be willing to use any of them on a modern-day baby? Why or why not?
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