How popular is the baby name Giacomo 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 Giacomo.
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The name Casanova — made famous during the 18th century by Italian adventurer and womanizer Giacomo Casanova — started popping up in the U.S. baby name data in the mid-1980s. It saw a modest increase in usage a few years later:
1989: unlisted
1988: 14 baby boys named Casanova
1987: 11 baby boys named Casanova
1986: unlisted
The spelling variant Cassanova debuted around the same time, in 1987.
What was influencing these names?
The catchy song “Casanova” by R&B vocal trio LeVert. It was released in mid-1987 and peaked at #5 on Billboard‘s Hot 100 chart. Though the group had multiple songs reach #1 on the R&B chart, “Casanova” was their strongest showing on the pop chart.
The group consisted of brothers Gerald and Sean LeVert — sons of O’Jays lead vocalist Eddie LeVert — and a third member, Marc Gordon.
Thanks to the success of the song, the French surname LeVert also saw its highest-ever usage in the late 1980s:
1989: 17 baby boys named Levert
1988: 19 baby boys named Levert [peak usage]
1987: 7 baby boys named Levert
1986: unlisted
1985: unlisted
(The surname is rendered “Levert” in the data because the SSA strips out internal capitalization.)
Getting back to Casanova, though…what are your thoughts on “Casanova” as a first name?
P.S. Another member of the O’Jays, Walter Williams, was behind the peak usage of the names Shalawn and Seandra in the mid-1970s.
The Southern European country of Italy — that boot-shaped peninsula that juts out into the Mediterranean Sea — shares land borders with France, Switzerland, Austria, and Slovenia.
Last year, Italy welcomed 400,249 babies.
What were the most popular names among these babies? Sofia and Leonardo.
Here are Italy’s top 50 girl names and top 50 boy names of 2021:
Girl Names
Sofia, 5,578 baby girls (2.86%)
Aurora, 4,991
Giulia, 4,616
Ginevra, 3,803
Beatrice, 3,647
Alice, 3,392
Vittoria, 3,202
Emma, 2,876
Ludovica, 2,813
Matilde, 2,633
Giorgia, 2,359
Camilla, 2,343
Chiara, 2,320
Anna, 2,291
Bianca, 2,201
Nicole, 2,169
Gaia, 2,088
Martina, 2,069
Greta, 2,052
Azzurra, 1,673
Sara, 1,651
Arianna, 1,647
Noemi, 1,639
Rebecca, 1,533
Mia, 1,494
Isabel, 1,422
Adele, 1,349
Chloe, 1,317
Elena, 1,298
Francesca, 1,260
Gioia, 1,202
Ambra, 1,171
Viola, 1,152
Carlotta, 1,149
Cecilia, 1,144
Diana, 1,117
Alessia, 1,101
Elisa, 1,086
Emily, 1,070
Marta, 1,066
Maria, 989
Margherita, 988
Anita, 978
Giada, 972
Eleonora, 926
Nina, 856
Miriam, 842
Asia, 823
Amelia, 805
Diletta, 804 – means “beloved” in Italian.
Boy Names
Leonardo, 8,448 baby boys (4.12%)
Alessandro, 4,975
Tommaso, 4,973
Francesco, 4,924
Lorenzo, 4,642
Edoardo, 4,369
Mattia, 4,215
Riccardo, 3,992
Gabriele, 3,944
Andrea, 3,860
Diego, 2,946
Matteo, 2,867
Nicolò, 2,847
Giuseppe, 2,740
Antonio, 2,598
Federico, 2,546
Pietro, 2,247
Samuele, 2,225
Giovanni, 2,211
Filippo, 2,113
Enea, 1,963 – form of Aeneas.
According to Greek mythology, the Trojan hero Aeneas was an ancestor of twins Romulus and Remus, the legendary founders of Rome. One ancient source associates Aeneas’ name with the Greek adjective ainos, meaning “unspeakable, causing nervousness, fear, terror.”
Davide, 1,925
Christian, 1,738
Gioele, 1,722
Giulio, 1,713
Michele, 1,685
Marco, 1,541
Gabriel, 1,439
Elia, 1,403
Luca, 1,400
Salvatore, 1,374
Vincenzo, 1,333
Emanuele, 1,326
Thomas, 1,322
Alessio, 1,251
Giacomo, 1,197
Nathan, 1,192
Liam, 1,174
Simone, 1,166
Samuel, 1,133
Jacopo, 1,129
Noah, 1,097
Daniele, 1,050
Giorgio, 1,025
Ettore, 1,002 – form of Hector.
Luigi, 996
Daniel, 946
Manuel, 936
Nicola, 859
Damiano, 830
Leonardo is still the clear favorite for baby boys, while Azzurra — no doubt inspired by Italy’s national soccer team gli Azzurri, “the Blues” — continues its rise among baby girls:
Popularity of Azzurra in Italy, 1999-2021
Here are Italy’s 2020 rankings, if you’d like to compare last year to the year before.
My wife and I got to take our baby boy named Kenai (named after Kenai Fjords National Park) on his first National Park trip to Rocky Mountain National Park just right before the fires. This was a special trip for us seeing that this would make his first adventure before the many to come.
(The baby name Kenai has become increasingly popular recently. I don’t know what year this particular baby was born, but over 10% of the Kenais born in 2019 were also from Texas.)
From an article in the New York Post about the “Via Getty” confusion on social media:
Lefties fired up over protesters storming the US Capitol Building mistakenly believed one caught-on-camera rioter was named “Via Getty” — because of a photo credit for the media firm Getty Images.
Politico reporter Ryan Lizza had posted a photo on Twitter with the message “Via Getty, one of the rioters steals a podium from the Capitol.”
But online critics embarrassingly assumed “Via Getty” was the guy’s name — instead of attribution for one of the world’s largest visual media companies.
(Usage of the baby name Via is rising pretty swiftly right now — anyone know why? I’m stumped.)
Some parents-to-be have been so distracted by the pandemic that they’ve skipped the deliberation and quickly picked a name. Amanda Austin of Erie, Pa., owner of an e-commerce store specializing in dollhouse miniatures, came up with her daughter’s name on a whim. “It was in March, when the whole world was shutting down,” she said. “Covid terrified me. My husband and his dad own a construction company and Pennsylvania had banned construction work.”
The name “Annette” popped suddenly into her mind. “I shared it with my husband and he loved it,” Austin said. “His reaction is a far cry from my other daughter’s naming process, where we went back and forth for months. I think we had so much going on with the pandemic that we didn’t have the mental bandwidth to dig deeper.” The name also reminded the couple of the 1950s, a “less complicated” time.
From a 1979 People article about the “eerie similarities” between two Ohio men who discovered, at age 39, that they were twins separated at birth:
Curiously, both had been christened James by their adoptive parents [who lived 40 miles apart]. As schoolboys, both enjoyed math and carpentry — but hated spelling. Both pursued similar adult occupations: Lewis is a security guard at a steel mill, and Springer was a deputy sheriff (though he is now a clerk for a power company). Both married women named Linda, only to divorce and remarry — each a woman named Betty. Both have sons: James Alan Lewis and James Allan Springer.
From a 2017 article about the off-Broadway play They Promised Her the Moon (which tells the story of pilot Geraldyn “Jerrie” Cobb, the first American woman to test for space flight):
“I immediately fell in love with the story,” the show’s director and producer, Valentina Fratti, told Space.com. “I couldn’t believe I didn’t know about Jerrie Cobb.”
Fratti had been named for the first woman in space, Valentina Tereshkova, but hadn’t known about the “almost first,” her American counterpart.
From a 1907 article in the Deseret Evening News called “Genealogy“:
A very good guide, in the study of New England genealogy, is given by the Christian name. In some families, Simon, Stephen and Thomas may follow down the line of sons; while others carry only John, James and William. Genealogists have great confidence in this clue, for those Christian old worthies used to name their sons after themselves and their fathers. They had not evolved into the “Vernons” and “Cecils” and “Irvings” of now-a-days; these modern names which mean nothing but a morbid craving for the romantic and unusual.
The American melting pot has made something of a stew of old world cultures. Isaac and Rebecca Goldberg are the parents not of Moses and Rachael, but of Donald and Marie. Hjalmar and Sigrid Johanson are the parents of Richard and Dorothy. It seems rather a shame that Axel and Jens, Helma and Ingeborg, not to mention Stanislaus and Giacomo and Pedro and Vladimir have just about disappeared. The custom seems to be for the first generation to anglicize the given name as soon as possible. The next generation or two branches out and we get Pat Johnson, even Angus Puccini. Then, after a few generations, there is a tentative reach backward for the Shawns or even the Seans. Katy’s real name may again be Caitlin, Pat’s Padriac.
Have you spotted any interesting name-related quotes/articles/blog posts lately? Let me know!
We looked at the top baby name rises last month, so this month let’s look at the opposite: the top drops. That is, the baby names that decreased the most in usage, percentage-wise, from one year to the next in the Social Security Administration’s data.
Here’s the format: girl names are on the left, boy names are on the right, and the percentages represent single-year slides in usage. (For example, from 1880 to 1881, usage of the girl name Clementine dropped 68% and usage of the boy name Neil dropped 76%.)
The SSA data isn’t perfect, but it does become more accurate in the late 1930s, because “many people born before 1937 never applied for a Social Security card, so their names are not included in our data” (SSA). Now, back to the list…
I’ve already written about some of the names above (click the links to see the posts) and I plan to write about a few of the others. In the meanwhile, though, feel free to beat me to it — leave a comment and let us know why you think any of these names saw dropped in usage when they did.
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