How popular is the baby name Jacy 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 Jacy.

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Popularity of the baby name Jacy


Posts that mention the name Jacy

How did Jet magazine’s “Beauties of the Week” influence baby names?

Taren Sims as the "Beauty of the Week" in Jet magazine (Oct. 1981)
Taren Sims in Jet magazine

Jet was a pocket-sized weekly magazine focused on African-American news and entertainment. While it was being published in print (1951-2014), Jet was “a ubiquitous presence in black communities” — particularly in places like barbershops and beauty parlors.

Most issues of Jet included a full-length portrait of an attractive young woman wearing a swimsuit. The accompanying text revealed the woman’s name and location, plus a few other details (e.g., body measurements, occupation, college major, and/or hobbies). In late 1975, Jet began referring to each of these women as the “Beauty of the Week” in the table of contents.

We’ve already discussed several baby name-popularizing “Beauties of the Week” (Annazette, Debraca, Meyosha, Tchanavian, and Tijwana), but how many others had a similar effect?

To find out, I flipped through every single 20th-century issue of Jet, gathered all the “Beauty of the Week” names, and checked these names in the U.S. baby name data. The result? More than two dozen likely cases of influence…

Ouida
Ouida Williams, a dancer from St. Louis, was featured in Jet in July of 1953. The baby name Ouida saw an uptick in usage the same year.

Meiling
Mei Ling Leung, a college student in Los Angeles, was featured in Jet in April of 1960. The baby name Meiling debuted in the data the same year.

Dollicia Holloway as the featured beauty in Jet magazine (Oct. 1961)
Dollicia Holloway in Jet magazine

Dollicia
Dollicia Holloway, a legal secretary from Long Island, was featured in Jet in October of 1961. The baby name Dollicia debuted in the data the next year.

Kaaron
Kaaron Sidney, a keypunch operator from Chicago, was featured in Jet in May of 1962. The baby name Kaaron was a one-hit wonder in the data the same year.

Darien
Darien Daniels, an actress from Los Angeles, was featured in Jet in June of 1968. The baby name Darien saw an uptick in usage (as a girl name) the same year.

Sharmeen
Sharmeen Caldwell, a model from Memphis, was featured in Jet in November of 1972. The baby name Sharmeen debuted in the data the same year.

Cherisse
Cherisse Wilson, a model from Detroit, was featured in Jet in September of 1973. The baby name Cherisse saw increased usage the same year.

Cherron
Cher’ron Burrell, a beauty pageant winner from Dallas, was featured in Jet in April of 1974. The baby name Cherron peaked in usage the same year.

Kimara
Kimara Parker, a model from Chicago, was featured in Jet in October of 1974. The baby name Kimara saw increased usage the same year.

Shayla Simpson as the featured beauty in Jet magazine (Apr. 1977)
Shayla Simpson in Jet magazine

Shayla
Shayla Simpson, a model from Washington, D.C., was featured in Jet in April of 1977. The baby name Shayla saw increased usage the same year. (From 1977 to 1991, Shayla Simpson was also the commentator of the Ebony Fashion Fair. Both Jet and Ebony ran photos of her regularly during this period. On her website, Shayla notes that “she has met over 350 babies who were named “Shayla” in her honor.”)

Treina
Treina Booker, a model from Los Angeles, was featured in Jet in March of 1979. The baby name Treina peaked in usage the same year.

Nivia
Nivia Souffront, a model of Puerto Rican descent, was featured in Jet in December of 1979. The baby name Nivia peaked in usage the next year.

Lavasia
Lavasia Butcher, a model from Los Angeles, was featured in Jet in February of 1981. The same year, the baby name Lavasia both debuted in the data and reached peak usage.

Lakaii
Lakaii S. Tae, a singer and dancer from Los Angeles, was featured in Jet in October of 1981. The baby name Lakaii debuted in the data the same year.

Taren
Taren Sims, a flight attendant from Jersey City, was featured in Jet in October of 1981. The baby name Taren saw a spike in usage the next year.

Cassaundra
Cassaundra Anderson, an aspiring model from Richmond, Virginia, was featured in Jet in July of 1982. The baby name Cassaundra saw increased usage the same year.

Chartese
Chartese Berry, a student at Georgetown University, was featured in Jet in February of 1983. The baby name Chartese was a one-hit wonder in the data the same year.

Jakki Davis as the "Beauty of the Week" in Jet magazine (Sept. 1984)
Jakki Davis in Jet magazine

Jakki
Jakki Davis, a Cancerian from Seattle, was featured in Jet in September of 1984. The baby name Jakki saw an uptick in usage the same year.

Fotini
Fotini Williams, a secretary from Chicago, was featured in Jet in October of 1984. The baby name Fotini saw an uptick in usage the same year.

Yoshani
Yoshani Wije, “a native of the island nation Sri Lanka,” was featured in Jet in January of 1989. The baby name Yoshani was a one-hit wonder in the data the same year.

Tai
Tai Keart, a model and dancer from Los Angeles, was featured in Jet in April of 1991. The baby name Tai saw an uptick in usage the same year.

Tonisha
Tonisha Joyner, a nursery school teacher from Chesapeake, Virginia, was featured in Jet in September of 1992. The baby name Tonisha saw increased usage the same year.

Anetra
Anetra Reinhart, a model from Louisville, was featured in Jet in May of 1993. The baby name Anetra saw an uptick in usage the same year.

Najha Phillips as the "Beauty of the Week" in Jet magazine (Aug. 1993)
Najha Phillips in Jet magazine

Najha
Najha Phillips, a model from Washington, D.C., was featured in Jet in August of 1993. The baby name Najha debuted in the data the same year.

Talani
Talani Rabb, a model from Hawthorne, California, was featured in Jet in March of 1996. The baby name Talani debuted in the data the next year. (In 2009, Talani married Wu-Tang Clan member Robert Fitzgerald “RZA” Diggs — whose stage name became a baby name in 2023.)

Irian
Irian Thomas, a college student, was featured in Jet in March of 1999. The baby name Irian saw an uptick in usage the next year.

Which of the above names do you like the most?

P.S. Covergirl Jacy De Souza was also a two-time “Beauty of the Week” in 1961…

Sources:

Images: Clippings from Jet magazine (12 Oct. 1961; 7 Apr. 1977; 29 Oct. 1981; 3 Sept. 1984; 30 Aug. 1993)

What gave the baby name Jaycie a boost in 1996?

U.S. gymnast Jaycie Phelps at the 1996 Summer Olympics
Jaycie Phelps

The baby name Jaycie nearly quadrupled in usage from 1995 to 1996:

  • 1998: 118 baby girls named Jaycie
  • 1997: 162 baby girls named Jaycie
  • 1996: 200 baby girls named Jaycie [rank: 963rd]
  • 1995: 51 baby girls named Jaycie
  • 1994: 40 baby girls named Jaycie

In fact, it reached the top 1,000 for the first and only time in 1996.

Other spellings of the name (like Jacy, Jacey, Jaycee, and Jayci) also saw increased usage that year.

What was the influence?

U.S. gymnast Jaycie Phelps. She was part of the 1996 U.S. women’s gymnastics team — the “Magnificent Seven” — that won gold at the Summer Olympics in Atlanta. The U.S. gold broke Soviet Union’s decades-long winning streak in the women’s team all-around.

Jaycie Phelps, who was born and raised in Indiana, is now back in her home state running the Jaycie Phelps Athletic Center.

What are your thoughts on the name Jaycie? (What spelling do you prefer?)

P.S. The other six gymnasts on the U.S. team that year were named Amanda, Amy, Dominique (2), Kerri, and Shannon.

Sources:

Why didn’t Cloris Leachman change her name?

Actress Cloris Leachman (1926-2021)
Cloris Leachman

While other mid-20th-century actors and actresses were swapping out their birth names for catchy stage names (like Rory Calhoun, Lana Turner, Kirk Douglas, Piper Laurie, Tab Hunter, and Rock Hudson), Cloris Leachman decided to go against the grain and stick with her legal name (which she’d inherited from her mother).

But she did consider changing her name for a time…thanks largely to Tallulah Bankhead.

In 1949, Cloris was in her early 20s and appearing on stage in Come Back, Little Sheba. Bankhead came to see the production, and, afterwards, when the two women met for the first time, Tallulah implored Cloris to change her name.

On a different occasion, Bankhead brought the topic up again:

“Cloris Leachman,” she crowed, “too long. Too many syllables. Too unknown. Clorox Bleachman would be better. You can’t even fit it on the marquee in front of a theater.”

During that second interaction, Cloris came up with the potential stage name “April Claiborne” by combining her birth month with her youngest sister’s first name. (“Claiborne” was their paternal grandmother’s maiden name.)

She still wasn’t sure about making the change, though.

When I went to the Actors Studio the next day, I talked about Madame Bankhead’s rant. They all agreed with her. “You have to change your name! You have to!,” they cried. It was a unanimous opinion. So right there we got out the New York phone book. It opened it up to the Ls, closed my eyes, and the name under my finger was Leavitt. It was miraculous. That translated to “Leave it!” This is no accident, I thought. The god of monikers is talking, and he says leave it. Okay, I’ll leave it.

When I got to Hollywood, the subject came up again. People said I should not only change my name, I should have my nose shortened. I emphatically didn’t want to do either, and that’s why I’m still Cloris Leachman with a big nose.

Cloris Leachman’s name may not have been as trendy-sounding as “Lana Turner” or “Piper Laurie,” but it certainly wasn’t an impediment to her career, which lasted more than seven decades. She appeared in nearly 100 films (like The Last Picture Show), dozens of TV movies (such as A Girl Named Sooner), and well over 100 TV shows (including Johnny Staccato, Rawhide, Outlaws, Shirley Temple’s Storybook, The Loretta Young Show, Gunsmoke, The Twilight Zone, Route 66, Wagon Train, Stoney Burke, 77 Sunset Strip, A Man Called Shenandoah, The Big Valley, Mannix, The Virginian, and Lancer).

Her first name, a variant spelling of the ancient Greek name Chloris (meaning “greenish-yellow, pale green”), is closely related to the name Chloe (meaning “green shoot”).

What are your thoughts on the name Cloris?

Sources:

What gave the baby name Jacy a boost in the early 1970s?

The character Jacy Farrow (played by Cybill Shepherd) from the movie "The Last Picture Show" (1971).
Jacy Farrow from “The Last Picture Show”

The name Jacy, which had been in the U.S. baby name data since the early ’60s, saw a modest jump in usage in 1972:

  • 1974: 47 baby girls named Jacy
  • 1973: 36 baby girls named Jacy
  • 1972: 25 baby girls named Jacy
  • 1971: 9 baby girls named Jacy
  • 1970: 7 baby girls named Jacy

Why?

Because of the coming-of-age film The Last Picture Show, which was released in October of 1971.

The film, shot in black-and-white upon the advice of Orson Welles, was set in north Texas in the early 1950s. One of the main characters was Jacy Farrow (played by Cybill Shepherd), who was both the prettiest and the wealthiest girl in the small town of Anarene.

The Last Picture Show was one of the highest-grossing films of 1971, and ended up with eight Oscar nominations (and two wins — for supporting actor Ben Johnson and supporting actress Cloris Leachman).

The movie was based on the 1966 semi-autobiographical novel of the same name by Larry McMurtry, who was also the writer behind the movie Hud.

The name Jacy saw another rise in usage in the early 1990s, possibly because The Last Picture Show‘s sequel, Texasville, came out in mid-1990.

What are your thoughts on the baby name Jacy?

Sources: The Last Picture Show – Wikipedia, AFI Catalog Spotlight: The Last Picture Show, SSA