The royal family has given me a lot to blog about in the last few years — Pippa in 2011, Jubilee in 2012, George in 2013…
So will the royal-inspired baby name of 2014 be Cressida?
The gossip sites are telling me that Prince Harry and his girlfriend, socialite Cressida Bonas, may marry next year. Apparently Harry met Cressie (as friends call her) via cousin Eugenie.
Where does the name Cressida come from?
We know it from Shakespeare’s play Troilus and Cressida (1602). Cressida is a medieval form of the Greek name Chryseis, which Shakespeare would have known from Homers’ Iliad. In the Iliad, Chryseis (as her name indicates) was the daughter of Chryses, whose name was derived from the ancient Greek word chrysos, meaning “gold” or “golden.”
How are Cressida and Cressie doing on the charts right now?
- The baby name Cressida has appeared on the SSA’s list a handful of times, mostly in the 1970s and 1980s, but no more than 8 Cressidas have ever been born in a single year. It was last listed in 1990.
- The baby name Cressie has had better luck, though it was more popular during the 1910s and 1920s than it is today. It was last listed in 1987.
If Harry and Cressie marry next year, do you think the royal wedding will popularize the name Cressida in the U.S.?
(And if they don’t, do you think there’s a chance the name could become trendy anyway thanks to the third Hunger Games film, due out in late 2014?)
Source: Prince Harry planning to marry Cressida Bonas, friends say
Other predictions so far for 2013: D’Ussé, Lincoln, Cypher, Elon, Macklemore, Elon, Malala, Gatsby, and more.