How popular is the baby name Geronimo 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 Geronimo.

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Popularity of the baby name Geronimo


Posts that mention the name Geronimo

Was Kamala Harris named after an actress?

Actress Kamala Devi (1933-2010)
Kamala Devi

With the presidential inauguration just two days away, now is a good time to take a closer look at the baby name Kamala.

Most Americans already know that Kamala Devi Harris’ first name is pronounced KAH-mah-lah (or “comma-la“). And I bet some also know that the Sanskrit name Kamala means “lotus,” and is sometimes used to refer to the Hindu deity Lakshmi.

But here’s an intriguing fact that isn’t very well known: usage of the baby name Kamala peaked in 1964 — the year that Kamala Harris was born.

  • 1967: 46 baby girls named Kamala
  • 1966: 51 baby girls named Kamala
  • 1965: 91 baby girls named Kamala
  • 1964: 105 baby girls named Kamala [rank: 1,064th]
  • 1963: 44 baby girls named Kamala
  • 1962: 20 baby girls named Kamala
  • 1961: 10 baby girls named Kamala

Here’s the graph:

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

What caused the spike?

I believe the influence was half-Indian, half-English actress Kamala Devi (birth name: Kamala Devi Amesur). She came to the U.S. from India around 1960, and over the course of the decade appeared in two U.S. films and on about ten TV shows (including My Three Sons).

The thing that put her name in the papers, though, was her 1963 marriage to actor Chuck Connors, her co-star in the 1962 film Geronimo. (You can see several press photos of the pair at one Chuck Connors fan site.) Here’s what Louella Parsons wrote about the couple in mid-1963:

The Brooklyn-born Irishman and the Bombay-born East Indian, married in April, are as unlikely a combination as you could dream up, but they seem ideally mated. Chuck and Kamala met when both played in “Geronimo.” She was the last actress to be interviewed for the lead opposite him. “I took one look at her,” says Chuck, “and that was it.”

So, now, back to Vice President-elect Kamala Harris.

I have never seen anything that explicitly connects Kamala Devi Harris to Kamala Devi, but the fact that Harris’ middle name is Devi (which means “goddess”), and the fact that she was born in 1964, makes me think Harris’ parents were probably influenced by the actress — whether they were aware of it or not.

(Her parents, Donald Harris of Jamaica and Shyamala Gopalan of Tamil Nadu, met as graduate students in California in the fall of 1962. They married in July of 1963 and welcomed their first daughter, Kamala, the following year in October. Their second daughter, Maya Lakshmi, was born in early 1967.)

Regardless, Kamala Harris’s visibility over the last few years seems to have had a slight influence on the name:

  • 2020: 18 baby girls named Kamala
  • 2019: 13 baby girls named Kamala
  • 2018: 10 baby girls named Kamala
  • 2017: 10 baby girls named Kamala
  • 2016: 10 baby girls named Kamala

What are your thoughts on the name Kamala?

Sources:

Paired comparison analysis for choosing baby names

Free Download, Paired Comparison Analysis for Baby Names, from Nancy's Baby Names

Need to narrow down your list of favorite baby names? Make your names go mano a mano in a paired comparison analysis!

Access the free spreadsheet by downloading it from Google Drive: Paired Comparison Analysis for Baby Names. Click “File,” then “Download as,” then choose a file format.

Instructions are included in the file, but here’s the gist of it: write in the baby names you’re considering, look at each possible one-to-one match-up, determine a winner, and rate each winner. The spreadsheet will then tally everything up and reveal which name is the most dominant winner.

The file has two sheets — the first is blank, the second is filled out, as an example. (I randomly used the names Chet, Robert, Anthony, Geronimo, Chase and Jayden on the example sheet. Feel free to play around with the numbers on that sheet to see how they affect the percentages below.)

Let me know if you experience any problems with the spreadsheet and I’ll do my best to help you out.

If you find this spreadsheet helpful, please share it on Pinterest, Facebook, etc. Thanks!

(This is an updated version of one of the baby name spreadsheets I posted years ago. Next week I’ll post the new version of the weighted decision matrix.)

Pope Benedict talks baby names

Pope Benedict XVI mentioned baby names over the weekend. Well, maybe not baby names — baptismal names is more precise. In any case, here’s what he said while baptizing a 21 infants in the Sistine Chapel on Sunday:

Every baptism should ensure that the child is given a Christian name, an unmistakable sign that the Holy Spirit will allow the person to blossom in the bosom of the Church. Do not give your children names that are not in the Christian calendar.

I’ve seen other church officials comment on this issue, but never the Pope himself. I wonder what sort of impact it will have on Catholic parents.

BONUS: Here are some interesting quotes I collected from news articles covering this story.

The first little examples of Mela (Italian for Apple) and Pesche (Peaches) are already up and walking, say the Italian newspapers, thanks to the decisions of Gwyneth Paltrow and Bob Geldof to pick names at the greengrocer.

Celebrity baby names in translation. Trippy.

Even leading politicians have chosen unusual names. The pugnacious Defence Minister Ignazio La Russa christened his three sons Geronimo, Lorenzo Cochis and Leonardo Apache.

Geronimo and Cochise were both Apache leaders.

[Names] banned in Portugal include Lolita, Maradona and Mona Lisa.

Diego Maradona (b. 1960) is a former pro soccer player from Argentina.

Another source mentioned something about a Sue Ellen trend in Italy during the 1980s, thanks to the popularity of American TV show Dallas, but I can’t locate the original article/link.

Sources: For heaven’s sake, Pope hopes to end trend for exotic names, Pope makes a plea to parents to give their children traditional names