How popular is the baby name Jane 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 Jane.

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Popularity of the baby name Jane


Posts that mention the name Jane

Baby girl gets 26 names: Ann Bertha Cecilia…

I’ve found long names, and alphabetical sibling names, but this is the first time I’ve spotted a long, alphabetical name that belonged to a single individual.

A baby girl born on December 19, 1882, in West Derby, Liverpool, England, to Arthur and Sarah Pepper was named:

Ann Bertha Cecilia Diana Emily Fanny Gertrude Hypatia Inez Jane Kate Louisa Maud Nora Ophelia Quince Rebecca Starkey Teresa Ulyses Venus Winifred Xenophon Yetty Zeus Pepper

Regarding the name, the Boston Evening Transcript quipped, “Apparently the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children has little power in London”:

Ann Bertha Cecelia

(The handwriting on the original birth record is relatively clear, but certain names are hard to make out — this accounts for the spelling differences between my version and the Transcript‘s version.)

Thoughts?

Sources:

Dogs named Carlo, thanks to “Jane Eyre”

dog, pointer

Did you know that Emily Dickinson got a dog in 1849 and named him Carlo after the dog in the novel Jane Eyre (1847)?

The fictional dog created by Charlotte Bronte was a pointer, while the nonfictional dog owned by Emily Dickinson was likely a brown Newfoundland.

Many other dogs (both real and fictional) were named Carlo around this time as well, no doubt due to the influence of Jane Eyre.

At least five of the dogs residing in Amherst, Massachusetts (Dickinson’s hometown) in 1858 were named Carlo, for instance.

Dogs named Carlo were also featured in books such as Cranford (1851) by Elizabeth Gaskell and Reveries of a Bachelor (1850) by “Ik Marvel” (pseudonym of Donald Grant Mitchell).

Source: Carlo (1849-1966), dog – Emily Dickinson Museum

Image: Adapted from Kenzo cazando en sanbernardo (public domain)

[Latest update: Apr. 2024]

Where did the baby name Barbarella come from in 1969?

The title character from the movie "Barbarella" (1968)
Barbarella from “Barbarella“

The name Barbarella has appeared in the U.S. baby name data just twice:

  • 1971: unlisted
  • 1970: 8 baby girls named Barbarella
  • 1969: 17 baby girls named Barbarella [debut]
  • 1968: unlisted
  • 1967: unlisted

You probably already know the source of this one: sci-fi cult classic Barbarella (1968), which starred Jane Fonda as a voluptuous 41st-century astronaut on a mission to track down Earth scientist Durand Durand* somewhere in outer space.

Though the film wasn’t popular with audiences initially, it has since become a cult classic.

The character Barbarella was created in the early ’60s by French comic strip illustrator Jean-Claude Forest. I’m not sure how he came up with the name, but I’d guess that he was inspired by the traditional name Barbara, which can be traced back to the Ancient Greek word barbaros, meaning “foreign.”

*In the late ’70s, synth-pop band Duran Duran named themselves after the missing scientist Durand Durand.

Sources: Barbarella (film) – Wikipedia, SSA

English baby names, after the Norman Conquest

William the Conqueror depicted on the Bayeux Tapestry
William (“Willelm”) the Conqueror

I recently came across a BBC article that described how the Norman Conquest drastically changed naming practices in England. Anglo-Saxon names like Aethelred, Eadric, and Leofric were soon replaced by Norman names like William, Robert, and Henry following the 11th-century invasion, which was led by William the Conqueror.

Here’s a quote from the article by English historian Robert Bartlett:

The ruling elite set the fashion and soon William was the most common male name in England, even among peasants. A lot of people changed their names because they wanted to pass in polite society – they didn’t want to be mistaken for a peasant, marked out with an Anglo-Saxon name.

And here are some more details regarding the names, from a later article in The Telegraph:

In Peter Ackroyd’s Foundation, the author notes that on an English farm in 1114 the workers were listed as being called Soen, Rainald, Ailwin, Lemar, Godwin, Ordric, Alric, Saroi, Ulviet and Ulfac. By the end of the century all these names had disappeared.

Because the Normans had conquered England half a century earlier, all these men were easily identifiable as Anglo-Saxons just by their names.

[…]

Of the old English names, only Alfred, Edmund, Edwin and Edgar survived, while Edward thrived, largely thanks to the cult of Edward the Confessor.

The author also mentioned that, per Ackroyd, “a boy from Whitby was recorded as changing his name from Tostig to William because he was being bullied” at the beginning of the 12th century.

And, in case you were wondering about female names, here’s a quote by English historian David Hey:

After the Norman Conquest the personal names that had been popular with the Anglo-Saxons and the Vikings fell out of favour. Some of the names favoured by the Normans were female equivalents of male names, e.g. Joan, Jane, Janet from John, or Patricia, Petra, and Paula from Patrick, Peter, and Paul. Others were biblical names or the names of saints. Joan and Agnes were first recorded in England in 1189, Catherine in 1196, Mary in 1203, Elizabeth in 1205, and Anne in 1218.

Two more female names favored by the Normans were Alice and Matilda.

Sources:

Image: Bayeux Tapestry