The name Mercedes, which has featured in the U.S. baby name data since the very beginning, saw a steep rise in usage during the late 1980s and early 1990s:
- 1992: 1,729 baby girls named Mercedes [rank: 178th]
- 1991: 1,798 baby girls named Mercedes [rank: 164th]
- 1990: 1,654 baby girls named Mercedes [rank: 176th]
- 1989: 1,219 baby girls named Mercedes [rank: 224th]
- 1988: 609 baby girls named Mercedes [rank: 395th]
- 1987: 427 baby girls named Mercedes [rank: 501st]
- 1986: 385 baby girls named Mercedes [rank: 530th]
What triggered the increase?
I think the answer is a combination of two different things.
The initial influence was the Pebbles song “Mercedes Boy” [vid], in which the singer repeatedly asks, “Do you wanna ride in my Mercedes, boy?” The song was released as a single in March of 1988 and ranked #2 on Billboard‘s Hot 100 chart for two weeks in July.
The second influence was a character from the teen comedy License to Drive, which came out in theaters in July of 1988. Mercedes Lane (played by Heather Graham) was the crush of main character Les Anderson (played by Corey Haim) — who wasn’t going to let the fact that he’d failed his driver’s exam stop him from taking Mercedes out on a date in his grandfather’s prized Cadillac.
The License to Drive soundtrack didn’t include “Mercedes Boy,” but viewers could hear more than a minute of the song during a scene in which Les was out driving with his father.
The name Mercedes means “mercies” in Spanish. It comes from Nuestra Señora de las Mercedes, one of the many titles of the Virgin Mary.
The name came to be associated with cars in the first years of the 1900s. Austrian businessman Emil Jellinek ordered a racing car (built to his specifications) from German manufacturer Daimler-Motoren-Gesellschaft in 1900, and he dubbed the car “Mercedes” in honor of his daughter Mercédès (b. 1889). The car became so successful that, in 1902, DMG began using “Mercedes” as the official trade name of its entire line of cars.
What are your thoughts on the name Mercedes?
Sources: Mercedes Boy – Wikipedia, Billboard Hot 100 for the week of 9 Jul. 1988, License to Drive – Wikipedia, Emil Jellinek – Wikipedia, SSA
Top image: Screenshot of License to Drive
