How popular is the baby name Glenn in the United States right now? How popular was it historically? Find out using the graph below! Plus, check out all the blog posts that mention the name Glenn.

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Popularity of the Baby Name Glenn


Posts that Mention the Name Glenn

Baby name story: Tex

Saxophone player Tex Beneke (1914-2000)
Tex Beneke (in 1947)

Tex Vertmann was born in Estonia in the mid-1970s. The very American-sounding first name “Tex” is unusual in Estonia — how did he come to have it?

Vertmann said his parents used to spend the best moments of their life together at the cinema, watching all kinds of foreign movies that had either been left behind by the Germans or bought by the Soviet Union from the U.S.

Estonia was part of the USSR from 1940 to 1991, and for several years during WWII it was occupied by Nazi Germany.

Among these were the Italian film “Return to Sorrento” and “Waterloo Bridge” […] But Vertmann’s parents just adored “Sun Valley Serenade,” in which the famous Glenn Miller conducted his orchestra.

These films were released in 1945, 1940, and 1941, respectively.

The name of one of Miller’s band players, the tenor-sax, was Tex Beneke. Vertmann remembered [his] parents also liked the Miller song “Chattanooga Choo-Choo,” which begins with the line “Hello Tex!” That’s how Vertmann got his very original name in the times of “deep socialism.”

The movie Sun Valley Serenade, which starred Sonja Henie, includes a sequence in which Texas-born Gordon Lee “Tex” Beneke both sings and whistles “Chattanooga Choo Choo.” The lyrics begin: Hi there Tex, whatchu say?

Americans of the early 1940s (but not the 1970s!) would have agreed with the Vertmanns about the song: a whopping 1.2 million copies of “Chattanooga Choo Choo” were sold by early 1942.

In recognition of this accomplishment, Miller’s record label presented him with a framed, gold-plated copy of the single — the very first gold record. This paved the way for RIAA-issued gold records in the late 1950s.

Sources:

Where did the baby name Perette come from in 1962?

Perette Dijon, a minor character from the TV series "Route 66" (1960-1964).
Perette Dijon from “Route 66“

The name Perette first appeared in the U.S. baby name data in 1962:

  • 1964: unlisted
  • 1963: unlisted
  • 1962: 16 baby girls named Perette [debut]
  • 1961: unlisted
  • 1960: unlisted

Ultimately, Perette was a one-hit wonder — the top one-hit wonder of the year, in fact.

And where did it come from?

A single-episode character on the popular TV show Route 66. The episode, “Mon Petit Chou,” first aired on November 24, 1961. It was set in Pittsburgh and guest-starred French actress Macha Méril as character Perette Dijon, a chanteuse with a Svengali-like manager named Glenn (played by Lee Marvin).

Macha was born Maria-Magdalena Vladimirovna Gagarina, and is technically a princess. (Her parents were Ukrainian nobility who fled to the south of France during the Russian Revolution.) When she decided to become an actress, she continued to use her nickname Macha, a diminutive of Maria, and added the surname Méril in tribute to jazz singer Helen Merrill (born Jelena Ana Milcetic).

Do you like the name Perette? Do you like it more or less than Macha?

Sources: “Mon Petit Chou,” Route 66, TV Episode 1961 – IMDb, Macha Méril – Wikipedia

Where did the baby name Landis come from in 1907?

Baseball commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis (1866-1944).
Ken Landis

Yesterday’s post told the story behind Kenesaw Mountain Landis‘ unique name. But there’s even more to the story…

In 1895, Kenesaw Landis returned to Chicago and founded a law firm with two other lawyers

A decade later, President Theodore Roosevelt appointed him a U.S. District Judge for Northern Illinois.

His “involvement in [various] high profile cases, combined with his flair for theatrics, brought his decisions and behavior to national attention. After Standard Oil [in 1907], Landis was dubbed the “most talked of persona in America.”

So he was already a well-known public figure by the time he became the first commissioner of professional baseball in late 1920 (which was not long after news of the Black Sox scandal broke).

Why am I getting into all this detail about Kenesaw Landis?

Because, once he became relatively famous, he began acquiring namesakes of his own!

The name Landis, for instance, debuted in the baby data in 1907 and nearly doubled in usage in 1920:

  • 1922: 17 baby boys named Landis
  • 1921: 18 baby boys named Landis
  • 1920: 23 baby boys named Landis
  • 1919: 12 baby boys named Landis
  • 1918: 13 baby boys named Landis
  • 1917: 14 baby boys named Landis
  • 1916: 17 baby boys named Landis
  • 1915: 13 baby boys named Landis
  • 1914: 7 baby boys named Landis
  • 1913: 7 baby boys named Landis
  • 1912: 6 baby boys named Landis
  • 1911: unlisted
  • 1910: 5 baby boys named Landis
  • 1909: unlisted
  • 1908: unlisted
  • 1907: 6 baby boys named Landis [debut]
  • 1906: unlisted
  • 1905: unlisted
Graph of the usage of the baby name Landis in the U.S. since 1880
Usage of the baby name Landis

The German surname Landis was derived from the Middle High German word landoese, “landless,” which was originally a “nickname for a highwayman or for someone who lays waste to the land.”

Even more interesting, though, are the dozens of boys who got other permutations of his name, such as…

Plus there’s Kenesaw Mountain Landis II — Ken’s own nephew, born in 1910 in Indiana to his younger brother Frederick.

Sources:

How did the movie “Giant” influence baby names in the 1950s?

The characters Bick and Leslie Benedict from the movie "Giant" (1956).
Bick and Leslie from “Giant“

One of last week’s post featured Glenna Lee McCarthy, whose father was famous Texas oil prospector and entrepreneur Glenn McCarthy (1907-1988).

Writer Edna Ferber fictionalized Glenn’s rags-to-riches life story in her novel Giant (1952) with the character Jett Rink.

The book was later made into a movie, which came out in October of 1956.

Jett was played by James Dean, who died in a car accident a month before the film premiered.

The other two main characters were Jordan “Bick” Benedict (played by Rock Hudson) and his wife Leslie Benedict (Elizabeth Taylor). Secondary characters included the Benedicts’ son Jordan, or “Jordy” (Dennis Hopper) and a neighbor named Vashti (Jane Withers).

The movie did well at the box office and was nominated for various Academy Awards, including a posthumous Best Actor nomination for Dean. It also gave a boost to several baby names.

In 1957, the year after the movie was released, the name Jett saw its then-highest-ever usage (a level that wasn’t surpassed until the 1980s).

  • 1958: 17 baby boys named Jett
  • 1957: 24 baby boys named Jett
  • 1956: 14 baby boys named Jett
  • 1955: 5 baby boys named Jett
  • 1954: unlisted

The boy name Jordan more than doubled in usage in 1957, and the diminutive form Jordy debuted the same year:

JordanJordy
1958186 [rank: 567th].
1957207 [rank: 539th]5*
1956101 [rank: 733rd].
1955106 [rank: 712th].
1954109 [rank: 692nd].
*Debut

Leslie — which had started being given more often to baby girls than to baby boys about a decade earlier — saw its highest-ever usage as a girl name in 1957:

  • 1958: 6,010 baby girls named Leslie [rank: 79th]
  • 1957: 6,101 baby girls named Leslie [rank: 77th] (peak usage)
  • 1956: 4,386 baby girls named Leslie [rank: 104th]
  • 1955: 4,403 baby girls named Leslie [rank: 99th]
  • 1954: 4,148 baby girls named Leslie [rank: 99th]
Graph of the usage of the baby name Leslie in the U.S. since 1880
Usage of the baby name Leslie

And Vashti, like Jordan, more than doubled in usage:

  • 1958: 10 baby girls named Vashti
  • 1957: 16 baby girls named Vashti
  • 1956: 7 baby girls named Vashti
  • 1955: 8 baby girls named Vashti
  • 1954: 8 baby girls named Vashti

Interestingly, Luz — another name that was used for two different characters in the movie — saw a slight decline in usage from 1956 to 1957.

Source: Giant (1956) – Wikipedia