How popular is the baby name Gloria 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 Gloria.

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Popularity of the baby name Gloria


Posts that mention the name Gloria

Where did the baby name Martika come from in 1986?

Martika's self-titled debut album (1988).
Martika album

The name Martika began popping up in the U.S. baby name data in the mid-1980s:

  • 1988: 8 baby girls named Martika
  • 1987: 12 baby girls named Martika
  • 1986: 13 baby girls named Martika [debut]
  • 1985: unlisted
  • 1984: unlisted

Why?

Because that’s when American singer/actress Martika (pronounced mar-TEE-kuh) began making a name for herself as the character Gloria on the children’s musical variety series Kids Incorporated (1984-1994).

“Martika” was both the nickname and stage name of Marta Marrero, born in California in 1969 to Cuban parents who’d fled the island “shortly after the revolution.”

In 1988, her debut album Martika was released. It featured the popular single “Toy Soldiers.” (This song was sampled recently by Eminem.)

Her second album, Martika’s Kitchen, came out in 1991.

As you might expect, the name Martika became much more popular in the late ’80s and early ’90s:

  • 1994: 47 baby girls named Martika
  • 1993: 69 baby girls named Martika
  • 1992: 179 baby girls named Martika
  • 1991: 146 baby girls named Martika
  • 1990: 273 baby girls named Martika [rank: 756th]
  • 1989: 207 baby girls named Martika [rank: 892nd]
  • 1988: 8 baby girls named Martika

It even gave rise to two variants, Marteka and Martica, both of which debuted in 1989.

But as the ’90s rolled along and the singer’s fame began to fade, the baby name Martika became less popular. It ended up dropping out of the SSA data entirely in 2002.

What are your thoughts on the baby name Martika?

Sources:

  • Biography – Martika
  • Larkin, Colin. The Guinness Encyclopedia of Popular Music. 2nd ed. London: Guinness Publishing, 1995.
  • SSA

Barbara Gale: The first hurricane-inspired baby name?

hurricane

In 1950, the United States Weather Bureau started naming Atlantic hurricanes and tropical storms.

The initial names came from a radio alphabet that began Able, Baker, Charlie, Dog, Easy, Fox and George. Because the alphabet happened to include several human names, you could say the first Atlantic storms that were “named” were the Charlies and Georges of 1950-1952.

It wasn’t until three years later that the USWB starting using human names exclusively. In 1953, it replaced the phonetic alphabet with a list of female names. (Male names weren’t thrown into the mix until 1979.)

The first storm with a female name was Tropical Storm Alice — the first storm of the 1953 storm season. I couldn’t find any babies named after Alice, but I did find one named after the second storm, Hurricane Barbara.

Hurricane Barbara traveled up the Eastern seaboard in mid-August. It struck the Outer Banks (islands off the North Carolina coast) on August 13. That night, a baby girl born in New Bern, N.C., to Mr. and Mrs. N. E. Ward was named Barbara Gale.

There were six other named storms (Carol, Dolly, Edna, Florence, Gail and Hazel) that season, but I could only find a namesake for one of them — Florence.

Hurricane Florence struck the Florida panhandle on September 26. Earlier that day, a baby born in Crestview, Florida, to Mr. and Mrs. Curtis Holt was named Sandra Florence.

Since 1953, many more babies — hundreds, probably — have been named for Atlantic hurricanes. Hurricane-inspired baby names I’ve written about here include Hazel (1954), Alicia (1983), Elena (1985), Gloria (1985), Andrew (1992) and Isabel (2003).

P.S. One of the things that helped popularize the idea of naming hurricanes in the first place was George R. Stewart’s book Storm (1941), which also had an influence on the baby name Mariah.

Sources:

Image: Adapted from Hurricane Elena by NASA (public domain)

Where did the baby name Morella come from in 1923?

The characters Theodora and Hector (played by Gloria Swanson and Rudolph Valentino) from the movie "Beyond the Rocks" (1922)
Theodora and Hector from “Beyond the Rocks“

The rare name Morella has only appeared in the U.S. baby name data a handful of times, starting in 1923:

  • 1925: unlisted
  • 1924: unlisted
  • 1923: 5 baby girls named Morella [debut]
  • 1922: unlisted
  • 1921: unlisted

Data from the Social Security Death Index (SSDI) shows a similarly small spike in usage that year:

  • 1925: 2 people with the first name Morella
  • 1924: 0 people with the first name Morella
  • 1923: 5 people with the first name Morella
  • 1922: 0 people with the first name Morella
  • 1921: 1 people with the first name Morella

What was the influence?

A secondary character from the silent film Beyond the Rocks (1922), which happens to be the only movie that featured Rudolph Valentino and Gloria Swanson together as co-stars.

The main character, Theodora (played by Swanson), was a young woman trapped in a loveless marriage to an middle-aged millionaire. She couldn’t help but fall in love with the dashing Hector, Lord Bracondale (played by Valentino) — especially after he rescued her twice (first from drowning, then from falling off a cliff in the Alps).

Morella Winmarleigh (played by Gertrude Astor), however, wished to have Hector all to herself. So, toward the end of the film, she tried to thwart their relationship by retrieving two of Theodora’s outgoing letters — one to Hector, the other to the millionaire husband — and switching the contents before returning them to the mailbox.

Though Morella wasn’t one of the good guys in the film, audiences would have seen her unusual name on-screen repeatedly, thanks to the intertitles. And that was enough to have a slight influence on U.S. baby names. (The names Hector and Theodora, both of which ranked well inside the top 1,000 in the early 1920s, were seemingly unaffected.)

The film was based on the romance novel Beyond the Rocks (1906) by Elinor Glyn.

What are your thoughts on the name Morella?

Sources: Beyond the Rocks (1922) – TCM, Beyond the Rocks (film) – Wikipedia, SSA

Where did the baby name Iniki come from in 1992?

hurricane

In September of 1992, Hurricane Iniki struck the Hawaiian island of Kauai. Iniki was the costliest and most powerful hurricane to hit the state of Hawaii in recorded history.

Like hurricanes Alicia, Andrew, Elena, Gloria and Isabel, Iniki ended up inspiring a few baby names. Unlike those other storms, though, Iniki’s name wasn’t a human name to begin with. It came from the Hawaiian word ‘iniki, which the National Weather Service defines as “sharp and piercing wind.” The Hawaiian dictionary I consulted was a bit more specific:

‘iniki. vi. To punch, nip; sharp and piercing, as wind or pangs of love.

In 1992, the name Iniki popped up in the U.S. baby name data for the very first time:

  • 1994: unlisted
  • 1993: 17 baby girls named Iniki
  • 1992: 28 baby girls and 7 baby boys named Iniki [dual-debut]
  • 1991: unlisted
  • 1990: unlisted

According to news reports, one of the baby boys, Iniki Thor Faamausili, was born in Hawaii to mom Saipisa Faamausili at 2:53 p.m. — not long before Hurricane Iniki made landfall.

In 1993, at least 17 more babies were named Iniki. After that, though, so few babies were named Iniki that the name stopped appearing on the SSA’s annual list.

P.S. Iniki Faamausil’s older brother, Iran, was named after the Persian Gulf War.

Sources:

  • The 1992 Central Pacific Tropical Cyclone Season (Central Pacific Hurricane Center)
  • Pukui, Mary Kawena and Samuel H. Elbert. Hawaiian Dictionary. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1986.
  • Sanchez, Sandra, Anita Manning and Mary Smaragdis. “What’s in a Name.” USA Today 14 Sept. 1992: 3A.
  • SSA

Image: Adapted from Hurricane Elena by NASA (public domain)