California-born quarterback Daryle Lamonica played professional football for twelve seasons (1963-1975).
He spent seven of those seasons with the Oakland Raiders, leading the team to four consecutive division titles (from 1967 to 1970) and its first Super Bowl appearance (in January of 1968). He was also named the AFL’s Most Valuable Player twice, in 1967 and 1969. (The winner in 1968 was Joe Namath, incidentally.)
Lamonica ended up influencing both boy names and girl names during the late ’60s and early ’70s.
Usage of boy name Daryle (one of the various spellings of the top-100 name Darrell) increased in both 1968 and 1970, while usage of the girl name Lamonica more than tripled in 1968 and nearly doubled in 1971 (the year that Monica reached the girls’ top 50 for the first time).
| Boys named Daryle | Girls named Lamonica | |
| 1972 | 71 [rank: 960th] | 78 |
| 1971 | 119 [rank: 749th] | 103† |
| 1970 | 142† [rank: 697th] | 56 |
| 1969 | 88 [rank: 824th] | 55 |
| 1968 | 95 [rank: 762nd] | 40 |
| 1967 | 62 [rank: 919th] | 12 |
| 1966 | 72 [rank: 854th] | 16 |
The Italian surname Lamonica may have sounded particularly appealing to African-American parents, as adding prefixes like “La-” to traditional names was becoming fashionable among African-Americans during the latter years of the civil rights movement. (Perhaps L’Tanya Griffin helped kick off the trend in the late 1940s…?)
Speaking of Lamonica, one of the few baby boys to get the name was actor LaMonica Garrett, who was born in San Francisco in 1975. (He went on to name his own son Montana after San Francisco 49ers quarterback Joe Montana.)
What are your thoughts on the names Daryle and Lamonica? Which one would you be more likely to use?
Sources:
- Daryle Lamonica – Wikipedia
- LaMonica Garrett – Wikipedia
- Vognar, Chris. “LaMonica Garrett rides high in the saddle as a Black cowboy who ‘helped shape the West’ in ‘1883’.” San Francisco Chronicle 29 Jan. 2022, Datebook sec.
- SSA
Image: Daryle Lamonica trading card