How popular is the baby name Janet 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 Janet.

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Popularity of the baby name Janet


Posts that mention the name Janet

The origin of the SSA’s baby name rankings

The Social Security Administration has released the top baby names of 2012!

I have a string of posts about the new names coming up.

Before that, though, here’s a bit about how the name list came to be, as told by Ruth Graham in the Boston Globe last month:

In 1997, Michael Shackleford was an employee of the Office of the Actuary at the Social Security Administration’s headquarters in Baltimore; his wife was pregnant and he was determined to avoid giving the child a common name like his own. With his access to Social Security card data, he wrote a simple program to sort the information by year of birth, gender, and first name. Suddenly he could see every Janet born in 1960. He could see that the number one names in 1990 were Michael and Jessica. He realized this could be important. “I knew that my eyeballs were seeing this list of the most popular baby names nationwide for the first time,” he recalled recently. “It was too good to keep to myself.”

The article goes on to talk about how social scientists have used the name data to do all sorts of interesting research.

One thing I haven’t seen addressed yet, though, is whether or not the mere existence/availability of this data has influenced (or maybe accelerated the cycles of) baby naming trends. Is today’s baby name data less “pure” than it used to be now that so many people are using the data itself to make decisions about baby names?

Source: What baby names say about everything else

Where did the baby name Willona come from in the 1970s?

The character Willona Woods from the TV series "Good Times" (1974-1979).
Willona Woods from “Good Times“

The name Willona first appeared in the U.S. baby name data in 1974:

  • 1980: unlisted
  • 1979: 12 baby girls named Willona
  • 1978: 12 baby girls named Willona
  • 1977: 14 baby girls named Willona
  • 1976: 13 baby girls named Willona
  • 1975: 16 baby girls named Willona
  • 1974: 15 baby girls named Willona [debut]
  • 1973: unlisted
  • 1972: unlisted

Why?

Because of the sitcom Good Times (1974-1979), which introduced TV audiences to feisty, fashionable Willona Woods (played by Ja’net Dubois).

The show was set in a housing project in Chicago, and the main focus was the Evans family: father James, mother Florida, and their three children (J.J., Thelma and Michael).

Scene-stealing Willona was the divorcée who lived across the hall and regularly popped in for visits [vid].

In a later season, Willona adopted an abused child named Penny (played by future superstar Janet Jackson).

The name Willona remained in the SSA data through the show’s six-season run.

What do you think of the name Willona?

Sources: Good Times – Wikipedia, SSA
Image: Screenshot of Good Times

Baby born to Jackson Daily News reporters, named Jackson Daily

Often I blog about baby names I spot in old newspapers. This one is no different, except it’s the first newspaper-inspired newspaper baby name that I’ve seen.

The parents are Dewey and Janet English, who met while working for the Jackson Daily News in Jackson, Mississippi. They had a son around 1990 and named him Jackson Daily “Jack” English.

The Jackson Daily News no longer exists, but Dewey is still in the newspaper business. He’s now the managing editor of the Press-Register in Mobile, Alabama.

Source: “One baby’s name tells a story of strength, caprice and the romance of a special kind of business.” Press-Telegram [Long Beach, CA] 6 Sep. 1990.

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