How popular is the baby name Karina in the United States right now? How popular was it historically? Find out using the graph below! Plus, check out all the blog posts that mention the name Karina.

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Popularity of the Baby Name Karina


Posts that Mention the Name Karina

Popular baby names in Armenia, 2021

Armenia

The landlocked country of Armenia is located in Western Asia and bordered by Turkey, Georgia, Azerbaijan, and Iran.

Last year, Armenia welcomed over 36,600 babies — about 17,600 girls and about 19,000 boys.

What were the most popular names among these babies? Nare and Davit.

Here are Armenia’s top 50 girl names and top 50 boy names of 2021:

Girl Names

  1. Nare, 758 baby girls – a diminutive of Narine (which ranked 49th)
  2. Maria, 635
  3. Arpi, 540
  4. Mane, 493
  5. Angelina, 444
  6. Marie, 402
  7. Yeva, 396
  8. Mariam, 357
  9. Anahit, 338 – an Armenian goddess (related to the Persian goddess Anahita)
  10. Anna, 305
  11. Sofi, 302
  12. Ani, 294
  13. Ellen, 284
  14. Milena, 279
  15. Lyusie, 277
  16. Eva, 263
  17. Ariana, 259
  18. Adriana, 247
  19. Luse, 245
  20. Tatev, 237 – from the name of the Tatev monastery
  21. Yana, 231
  22. Gayane, 226
  23. Nane, 224 – an Armenian goddess
  24. Milla, 202
  25. Arina, 193
  26. Emily, 187
  27. Elina, 186 (tie)
  28. Sona, 186 (tie)
  29. Lilit, 176
  30. Natalie, 170
  31. Sarah, 160
  32. Amelie, 155
  33. Hasmik, 153 – means “jasmine” in Armenian
  34. Lia, 152
  35. Arevik, 148
  36. Mary, 146
  37. Susanna, 136
  38. Viktoria, 134
  39. Monika, 130
  40. Gohar, 123
  41. Karina, 112
  42. Lili, 100
  43. Sofia, 98
  44. Karine, 92
  45. Lusine, 89 (tie) – based on the Armenian word lusin, meaning “moon”
  46. Anush, 89 (tie) – means “sweet” in Armenian
  47. Lucy, 88
  48. Sofya, 83 (tie)
  49. Narine, 83 (tie)
  50. Astghik, 82 – an Armenian goddess whose name is a diminutive of the Old Armenian word for “star”

Boy Names

  1. Davit, 1,275 baby boys
  2. Narek, 859
  3. Monte, 647
  4. Tigran, 584 – a form of Tigranes, the name of several ancient Armenian kings
  5. Areg, 564
  6. Hayk, 550
  7. Mark, 507
  8. Michael, 448
  9. Alex, 385
  10. Aren, 355
  11. Armen, 346
  12. Robert, 339
  13. Daniel, 326
  14. Gor, 323
  15. Arthur, 321
  16. Aram, 318
  17. Leo, 310
  18. Hovhannes, 303
  19. Samvel, 298
  20. Alen, 287
  21. Ashot, 255 (tie)
  22. Arman, 255 (tie)
  23. Levon, 252
  24. Erik, 232
  25. Gevorg, 219
  26. Gagik, 213
  27. Vahe, 209
  28. Arsen, 195
  29. Sargis, 186
  30. Artiom, 176
  31. Vardan, 154
  32. Karen, 152 – In Armenia, Karen is a male name! (Tell that to the manager!) It’s a short form of the Armenian name Garegin/Karekin.
  33. Avet, 150
  34. Albert, 126
  35. Andranik, 118
  36. Van, 116 – possibly from the name of Lake Van…?
  37. Suren, 115
  38. Raphael, 110
  39. Max, 105
  40. Ruben, 100 (tie)
  41. Hakob, 100 (tie)
  42. Alexandr, 97
  43. Mher, 95
  44. Grigor, 94
  45. Harutyun, 90
  46. Vahan, 80 – means “shield” in Armenian
  47. Edgar, 75
  48. Menua, 73 (tie) – the name of an ancient Armenian king
  49. Henry, 73 (tie)
  50. Noy, 67

Here’s a link to Armenia’s 2020 rankings, if you’d like to compare last year to the year before.

Sources: Statistical Committee of the Republic of Armenia (2021 pdf), Behind the Name
Image by DenisStreltsov from Pixabay

What popularized the baby name Tristan in the 1990s?

The character Tristran Ludlow (played by actor Brad Pitt) in the movie "Legends of the Fall" (1994).
Tristan Ludlow from “Legends of the Fall

The baby name Tristan saw an impressive jump in usage in the mid-1990s:

  • 1997: 4,196 baby boys named Tristan [rank: 92nd]
  • 1996: 5,458 baby boys named Tristan [rank: 68th]
  • 1995: 3,088 baby boys named Tristan [rank: 121st]
  • 1994: 492 baby boys named Tristan [rank: 452nd]
  • 1993: 567 baby boys named Tristan [rank: 409th]

The name’s rise in 1995 was the second-largest of the year (after Austin), and it reached the U.S. top 100 for the first time ever in 1996.

Here’s a visual:

Graph of the usage of the baby name Tristan in the U.S. since 1880
Usage of the baby name Tristan

Many variant forms of the name saw higher usage during those years as well…

1994199519961997
Tristen736181,1881,078
Triston48372726666
Tristin34288630549
Tristian36157304287
Trystan1899182178
Treston31585860
Tryston.426975
Tristyn.286048
Trysten28†4862
Trystin6133742
Tristain.112521
Trestan.1176
Trestin511610
Trystyn.7*125
Tresten..810
Tristion..5*6
Tristine..5†.
Thristan..5*.
*Debut, †Gender-specific debut

Tristen, Triston, Tristin and Tristian all entered top 1,000 in 1995, and Trystan followed a year later.

The name that saw the largest relative increase in usage in 1995 was Tristin. In second place? Tristen.

(…And this doesn’t even account for all the Tristan-related girl names that got a mid-’90s boost.)

So, what was the influence?

The character Tristan Ludlow (played by Brad Pitt) from the movie Legends of the Fall — a saga set in rural Montana during the early decades of the 1900s.

Tristan was the rebellious middle son of rancher Col. William Ludlow (Anthony Hopkins). He and his brothers — the older, ambitious Alfred (Aidan Quinn), and the younger, naïve Samuel (Henry Thomas) — all fell in love with the same beautiful woman, Susannah (Julia Ormond).

Released at the very end of 1994, the “big, robust Western love story” ranked #1 at the box office for four weeks straight in the early months of 1995.

Regarding Tristan Ludlow’s first name, one incredibly prescient reviewer noted that we should “look for [it] to be given to more than a few babies over the next few years.”

Tristan Ludlow didn’t end up with Susannah, but he did get married — to a Native American woman named Isabel (Karina Lombard). The name Karina saw it’s highest-ever usage in 1995, and the usage of Isabel also increased — though it was already on the rise, so there’s no telling how much of the increase was due specifically to the film.

Speaking of Isabel’s rise…

The fact that Legends of the Fall featured both a character named Isabel and an actor named Aidan, and that forms of these names (Isabella and Aiden) went on to reach the U.S. top 10 — peaking almost simultaneously a decade and a half later — is very interesting to me. It makes me wonder whether the movie’s impact on U.S. baby names wasn’t substantially greater (but also more complex?) than what the mid-’90s data would have us believe.

Isabella ranking, U.S.Aiden ranking, U.S.
20123rd10th
20112nd9th*
20101st*9th*
20091st*12th
20082nd16th
*Peak usage

(I began wondering about this after a friend of mine, who has a son named Aiden, mentioned that she’d had the name in the back of her mind ever since seeing Legends of the Fall as a teenager.)

What are your thoughts on this theory?

And, do you know anyone with a name that was inspired by Legends of the Fall?

Sources:

Name quotes #99: Silbestre, Iris, Kin

Silbestre Esquivel’s inscription (via Petrified Forest NP’s IG)

About the historical “Silbestre Esquivel” inscription inside Petrified Forest National Park:

Who was Silbestre Esquivel? In 1811, he inscribed his name in what would become Petrified Forest National Park. Was he passing through? Was he a lonely cowboy or shepherd? Even the history of discovery of the inscription is mysterious. Two different articles in a magazine and a newspaper in 1943 and 1945 claim to discover the name. The earlier one found it by directions from a business woman in the area—wouldn’t she be the one to have discovered it? A professional photographer, Michael Bend, did find out that the man was part of a party traveling from Santa Fe to Utah lead by José Rafaél Sarracino to trade with the Ute people. Such fascinating secrets!

(The name Silbestre — like the related name Sylvester — can be traced back to the Latin word silva, meaning “forest.”)

From Blake Lively’s WIRED Autocomplete Interview [vid] with Anna Kendrick:

Anna: How did Blake Lively…get her name?
Blake: My grandmother’s brother was named Blake.
A: Oh!
B: But he was murdered. So thanks for asking, Google.
A: She’s so dark.

(Blake Lively was also featured in Name Quotes #51.)

From a Louder interview with John Rzeznik about the Goo Goo Dolls’ hit song “Iris”:

By the time Rzeznik had ironed out some of the “ugly chord sequences”, he had a swooning future classic on his hands. Only the name was required. “I’m horrible at naming songs,” he says, “so it’s the last thing I do. I was looking through a magazine called LA Weekly and saw that a great singer-songwriter called Iris DeMent was playing in town. I was, like: ‘Wow! What a beautiful name.’

(The song doesn’t actually include the name Iris in the lyrics, and yet the usage of the baby name Iris does seem to rise at a faster rate in 1998 and 1999, so…did the song influence the name? Wdyt?)

From the book Indiana’s 200: The People Who Shaped the Hoosier State (2016) by James E. St. Clair:

Amid much publicity in the early 1950s, [Herb Shriner and his wife] had given their children names that reflected his Hoosier heritage: They had a daughter named Indiana (known as “Indy”) and a son, Kin, named in honor of Abe Martin creator Frank McKinney “Kin” Hubbard. Kin Shriner became a soap opera actor; his twin brother, Wil (named for Will Rogers, but with one l), became a comedian, television, director, and talk show host with a laid-back style reminiscent of his father.

From an essay about names in The Arizona Republic by Karina Bland:

When Jim and I were choosing a name for our son, we turned to the dictionary.

Sawyer has three half-siblings — Sonnet, Sky and Savannah. Each name is an actual word, not a name like Sam or Sarah. We wanted to do the same for this baby.

Our list is still there in my Random House College Dictionary with the red cover — 22 possibilities neatly printed in purple pencil on the back of a sheet of paper shaped like a cluster of grapes: Street, South, Story, Satchel, Sage, Saracen.

We had narrowed it down to a handful — Storm, Sawyer, Story, Scout, Scarlet — when we saw him on an ultrasound for the first time. A boy. And he was instantly Sawyer, one fist raised above his head, all boyhood and adventure.

From an essay on baby names in The Guardian by Ed Cumming:

The one truly radical act for a British parent is to pluck a name from further down the class ladder. Yet it might not be the worst idea for the downwardly mobile upper-middle classes, whose jobs in accounting and law are about to be replaced by Elon’s robots. They continue to worry that Liam or Wayne wouldn’t fit in at Eton, little realising that will be the least of their concerns. Cressida and Monty will have a much harder time fitting in at the robot repair shop.

Sea-themed names given to sea-born babies

Earlier this year, singer Ed Sheeran welcomed a baby girl named Lyra Antarctica Seaborn Sheeran. She wasn’t actually born at sea — “Seaborn” is her mother’s surname — but did you know that many of the babies named “Seaborn” throughout history were in fact born at sea?

And it doesn’t stop at “Seaborn.” These sea-born babies got all sorts of interesting names hinting at the circumstances of their birth. Here’s a round-up of what I’ve spotted in the records…

Sea-inspired names:

  • Sea
  • Seaborn (The earliest American example I know of is Seaborn Cotton, born in August of 1633 while as his parents were traveling from England to New England. Notably, he was the uncle of Cotton Mather.)
  • Seabourn
  • Seaborne
  • Seabourne
  • Seafield
  • Seaford
  • Seaforth (e.g., Charles Seaforth Stewart)
  • Sealine
  • Seaman
  • Sea-Mercy (This one comes from Sea-Mercy Adams, a man who got married in Philadelphia in 1686.)

Ocean-inspired names:

Marine-inspired names:

  • Marina
  • Marine
  • Mariner
  • Marino

Atlantic-inspired names:

  • Atlanta
  • Atlante
  • Atlantia
  • Atlantic (One was Atlantic Seaborn Ford, born in 1863. Another was Atlantic Missouri Linne, born in 1889.)
  • Atlantica
  • Atlantika

Pacific-inspired names:

  • Pacific
  • Pacifica
  • Pacifico

And, finally, all of the other sea-birth-inspired baby names I’ve seen:

If you had a baby on the open ocean, what would you name that baby?

Image: Salem Harbor (1853) by Fitz Henry Lane