How popular is the baby name Judith 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 Judith.
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Earlier this week we talked about the original Tristram Coffyn of Nantucket, who is known to have a massive number of descendants.
He and his wife Dionis* had five children in England, then four more after relocating to the New World. Here are the names of not only all nine of their children, but also their 76 grandchildren:
Daniel, Dionis, Peter, Stephen, Judith, Susanna, Anna, Mehitable, Hepzibah, Paul
Which of the above names do you like best? Are there any you don’t like at all?
*Dionis’s name is evidently a truncated form of Dionysia, which derives from Dionysius, which originally referred to a devotee of the Greek god Dionysos. The names Dennis and Denise are also derivatives of Dionysius.
**Nantucket’s Oldest House, also called the Jethro Coffin House, was built in 1686 as a wedding gift for Jethro Coffin.
Philadelphia native Grace Kelly appeared in her first movie in 1951. By 1955, she had become one of the biggest box-office draws in the nation. But she gave up her career as an actress to assume the role of a princess in 1956 when she married the ruler of Monaco.
I know of five baby names (so far) that got a boost thanks to Grace Kelly…
Grace
First thing’s first: Grace Kelly’s first name, Grace. It saw a two-year uptick in the mid-’50s:
1959: 1,660 baby girls named Grace [rank: 204th]
1958: 1,708 baby girls named Grace [rank: 198th]
1957: 1,917 baby girls named Grace [rank: 186th]
1956: 1,837 baby girls named Grace [rank: 189th]
1955: 1,390 baby girls named Grace [rank: 216th]
1954: 1,410 baby girls named Grace [rank: 213th]
Decades later, it would peak in the rankings at 13th place for two years in a row (2003 and 2004).
Kelly
The rise of Kelly can’t be attributed to a single factor, as we saw yesterday. That said, I have no doubt that Grace Kelly played a part in feminizing the first name Kelly during the 1950s:
1959: 6,379 baby girls named Kelly [rank: 74th]
1958: 4,471 baby girls named Kelly [rank: 108th]
1957: 1,907 baby girls named Kelly [rank: 187th]
1956: 831 baby girls named Kelly [rank: 310th]
1955: 540 baby girls named Kelly [rank: 380th]
1954: 455 baby girls named Kelly [rank: 406th]
Grace Kelly’s paternal grandparents were Irish immigrants. The Irish surname Kelly can have several possible origins, but a common one is the Ó Ceallaigh, “descendant of Ceallach.” The meaning of the personal name Ceallach isn’t known for certain — some sources say “bright-headed,” others say it comes from a word meaning “war,” or a different word meaning “church.”
In 1968, the name Kelly saw peak usage on the boys’ list (97th) and then-peak usage on the girls’ list (12th). In 1977, thanks to the Charlie’s Angels character, it bounced back to reach an even higher peak for girls (10th).
Lizanne
Grace’s little sister Elizabeth “Lizanne” Kelly married Donald LeVine in Philadelphia in June of 1955. The same year, the baby name Lizanne debuted on the charts:
1959: 32 baby girls named Lizanne
10 born in Pennsylvania
1958: 39 baby girls named Lizanne [peak]
13 born in Pennsylvania
1957: 36 baby girls named Lizanne
10 born in Pennsylvania
1956: 32 baby girls named Lizanne
9 born in Pennsylvania
1955: 15 baby girls named Lizanne [debut]
1954: unlisted
Notice how the usage of Lizanne in the late ’50s was particularly high in Pennsylvania. It was the same through most of the ’60s as well.
Rainier
Grace married Rainier III, the Prince of Monaco, in a lavish wedding in Monaco in April of 1956. The same year, the baby name Rainier debuted on the charts:
1959: unlisted
1958: unlisted
1957: 7 baby boys named Rainier
1956: 11 baby boys named Rainier [debut]
1955: unlisted
1954: unlisted
The name Rainier is ultimately based on the Germanic words ragin, meaning “advice, decision, counsel,” and hari, meaning “army.”
(The six bridesmaids at the wedding were named Bettina, Carolyn, Judith, Maree, Rita — actress Rita Gam — and Sally.)
Caroline
Grace and Rainier had three children: Caroline, Albert, and Stephanie. The births of the latter two didn’t seem to have an effect on U.S. baby names, but the birth of Caroline in January of 1957 did give Caroline a bump that year:
1959: 1,046 baby girls named Caroline [rank: 273rd]
1958: 990 baby girls named Caroline [rank: 282nd]
1957: 1,135 baby girls named Caroline [rank: 253rd]
1956: 702 baby girls named Caroline [rank: 329th]
1955: 743 baby girls named Caroline [rank: 315th]
1954: 770 baby girls named Caroline [rank: 304th]
Toward the end of 1957, John and Jacqueline Kennedy — who were still several years away from becoming President and First Lady — also welcomed a daughter named Caroline. They didn’t get the idea from Grace Kelly, though. Caroline Kennedy was named after her maternal aunt, Caroline Lee Radziwill.
A couple of months ago, we looked at a long, year-by-year list of the top baby name rises. A month after that, we saw the corresponding list of top drops.
On that second post, Frank B. left a comment in which he asked about absolute rises and drops — because the lists only covered relative movement within the data. So I thought two more posts were in order: top raw-number rises, and top raw-number drops.
We’ll start with the rises again. Just keep in mind that the SSA numbers don’t become very accurate until the mid-to-late 20th century, so many of the numbers below don’t quite reflect reality.
Here’s the format: Girl names are on the left, boy names are on the right, and the numbers represent single-year rises in usage. From 1880 to 1881, for instance, the usage of the girl name Ethel increased by 155 babies and the usage of the boy name Chester increased by 106 babies.
Some of these names I’ve written about already, and others I plan to write about in the future. If you can give explanations for any of those others right now, though, feel free! Just leave a comment…
The ratio of Biblical names to non-Biblical names in the girl’s top 20 is about the same today as it was 100 years ago, though the ratio did change a bit mid-century.
(In contrast, there’s been a steady increase in the number of Biblical-origin names among the top boy names.)
Here’s the color-coded table — Biblical names are in the yellow cells, non-Biblical names are in the green cells, and several borderline names (which I counted as non-Biblical) are in the orange cells:
Ava (could be based on the Germanic root avi or the Biblical name Eve)
Jessica (literary invention, but Shakespeare may have based it on the Biblical name Iscah)
Samantha (possibly inspired by the Biblical name Samuel)
Again, feels pretty weird to put overtly Christian names like Christina and Christine in the non-Biblical category, but oh well.
Here are the year-by-year tallies:
Year
Top 20 names given to…
# Biblical
# Non-Biblical
1914
31% of baby girls
6 (30%)
14 (70%)
1924
31% of baby girls
7 (35%)
13 (65%)
1934
32% of baby girls
9 (45%)
11 (55%)
1944
35% of baby girls
8 (40%)
12 (60%)
1954
34% of baby girls
9 (45%)
11 (55%)
1964
24% of baby girls
9 (45%)
11 (55%)
1974
24% of baby girls
8 (40%)
12 (60%)
1984
26% of baby girls
6 (30%)
14 (70%)
1994
19% of baby girls
6 (30%)
14 (70%)
2004
14% of baby girls
6 (30%)
14 (70%)
2014
12% of baby girls
5 (25%)
15 (75%)
Just like with the boy names, though, there’s a big difference between the 1914 and 2014 sample sizes — 31% and 12%. So let’s also look at the 2014 top 100, which covers 31% of female births.
By my count, last year’s top 100 girl names were about a quarter Biblical, three-quarters non-Biblical:
27%-73% is remarkably similar to both 25%-75% (smaller 2014 sample) and 30%-70% (1914 sample).
So here’s the question of the day: If you had to choose all of your children’s names from either one group or the other — Biblical names or non-Biblical names — which group would you stick to, and why?
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