How popular is the baby name Helma 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 Helma.

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Popularity of the baby name Helma


Posts that mention the name Helma

Name quotes #122: Fingal, Cecil, Madison

double quotation mark

Greetings everyone! Here’s this month’s quote post…

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. Romances guide the Christian names of babies today, alas, instead of sense of family loyalty. Have we not lost something of the real spirit of genuineness and fealty with the changed nomenclature of our babies?

From a review of the documentary The Ashley Madison Affair in the San Francisco Chronicle:

Ashley Madison launched in 2001 and took its name from the two most popular baby names at the time, “Ashley” and “Madison.” Right away, that’s creepy.

[Not technically true, but close. Ashley and Madison were the 4th- and 2nd-most popular baby girl names in the U.S. that year. In Canada — which is where the dating website is based — they ranked 13th and 4th.]

From a 1964 article in the Eugene Register-Guard called “Quite a Problem, Naming the Baby“:

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!

What turned Gamble into a baby name in 1961?

Gamble Benedict and Andrei Porumbeanu on the cover of Life magazine in April of 1960.
Gamble and Andrei (April, 1960)

Like the name Tirrell, the curious name Gamble appears regularly these days in the boys’ data, but it first popped up as a girl name — just once — in 1961:

  • 1963: unlisted
  • 1962: unlisted
  • 1961: 5 baby girls named Gamble [debut]
  • 1960: unlisted
  • 1959: unlisted

Where did it come from?

Another runaway heiress! This one was New York debutante/heiress Gamble Benedict, the granddaughter of Henry Harper Benedict (1844-1935), co-owner of the Remington Typewriter Company.

During the last days of 1959, 18-year-old Gamble ran away from home to be with her 35-year-old Romanian-born boyfriend, Andrei Porumbeanu (who already had a wife, Helma, and daughter, Gigi).

Gamble and Andrei first fled to Paris, where they stayed for most of January. (Gamble turned 19 mid-month.) At the end of the month, Gamble was apprehended by Paris police and “flown home to her stern dowager grandmother.”

The pair ran off again in April, after Andrei had obtained a Mexican divorce. This time they went south. They married in North Carolina on the 6th, then took a plane to Florida for a honeymoon.

The story was in the news for months on end during the first half of the year. (Several years later, in 1964, Time magazine summed it up as an “endlessly publicized…runaway marriage.”)

So what became of the couple? They ended up having two sons (George and Gregory) and spent most of their time in Switzerland…before Gamble initiated divorce proceedings in mid-1963.

Though I never found an explanation for Gamble’s unique first name, my guess is that it’s a surname that can be found somewhere in her family tree.

What are your thoughts on the name “Gamble” for a baby (male or female)? Would you use it?

Sources:

Image: © 1960 Life