The Italian name Gia is a pet form of Gianna, which itself is a contracted form of Giovanna (akin to Joanna). But Gia as a standalone name was very rare in the U.S. until the late 1950s, when usage increased enough for the name to debut in the U.S. baby name data:
- 1959: 51 baby girls named Gia
- 1958: 43 baby girls named Gia
- 1957: 18 baby girls named Gia [debut]
- 1956: unlisted
- 1955: unlisted
What gave it a boost?
America’s first famous Gia: actress Gia Scala, whose career took off in the late 1950s.
Her “real” name is hard to pin down. She was born in England with the name Josephine Scoglio. But…she spent her childhood in Italy, and when she applied for U.S. citizenship in 1957, she said her legal name was Giovanna Scoglio.
In any case, she started going by Gia not long after she moved to the U.S. (in the early 1950s), and Universal Studios gave her the stage name “Gia Scala” at the start of her film career.
Since then, several other famous Gias have also influenced the charts…
- Fashion model Gia Marie Carangi was at the peak of her fame in the late ’70s and early ’80s. It doesn’t look like her modeling career had any impact on the baby name Gia, but when the TV movie Gia starring Angelina Jolie came out in 1998, usage of the name more than tripled, and the compound name Giamarie debuted.
- Usage more than doubled from 2009 to 2011 (when Gia peaked in the national rankings at 300th place) thanks to two people: reality TV contestant Gia Allamand, who appeared on both The Bachelor and Bachelor Pad in 2010, and celebrity baby Gia Francesca, born to Mario Lopez and his wife in September of 2010.
Do you like the name Gia? Would you ever use it?
Sources: Gia Scala – Glamour Girls of the Silver Screen, Gia Scala – Wikipedia
P.S. Gia Allamand was on the same season of The Bachelor as Tenley Molzahn, whose name, Tenley, also happened to be a 1950s debut in the SSA data.