How popular is the baby name Lawrence 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 Lawrence.
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Tuesday’s post about the Victorian-style Tylney Hall Hotel reminded me of a list of Victorian-era names that I’ve had bookmarked forever.
The list was created by amateur genealogist G. M. Atwater as a resource for writers. It contains names and name combinations that were commonly seen in the U.S. from the 1840s to the 1890s. Below is the full list (with a few minor changes).
| Victorian Era Female Names | Victorian Era Male Names |
|---|---|
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Which female name and male name do you like best?
In yesterday’s post about the name Drene, I mentioned actor/entertainer Don Ameche.
Don, born Dominic Felix Amici in 1908, married his wife Honoré in 1932. They had six children:
The kids were known by nicknames, though, and most of those nicknames were perfect rhymes:
What do you think about a sibset with rhyming nicknames: yea or nay? (Does it depend upon the size of the sibset?)
Source: Houseman, Victoria. Made in Heaven: The Marriages and Children of Hollywood Stars. Chicago: Bonus Books, 1991.
Since the 1990s, expectant parents have been using the internet to ask complete strangers for baby name suggestions.
Crowdsourcing via cutting-edge technology — seems thoroughly modern, doesn’t it? It’s been going on for a few decades now, sure, but it’s a distinctly “information age” sort of practice, right?
That’s what I would have said…before discovering that expectant parents were using cutting-edge technology to crowdsource for baby names over 80 years ago.
How?
Radio!
During the first years of the 20th century, radio was used by the military for two-way wireless communication. Around 1920, it began to be used for one-way communication to larger audiences. This was called “broadcasting” (as opposed to “narrowcasting”).
Before long, expectant parents began asking radio stations for help coming up with baby names.
Early radio wasn’t recorded, so there’s no telling how many babies were named via radio. Luckily, newspapers ran stories on at least a handful of these radio-named babies. (That’s how I learned about them.)
The first instances I know of occurred in early 1923. This is long before the founding of broadcast networks such as NBC (1926) and CBS (1927), which were radio-based before making the jump to television years later.
Here’s what I’ve found so far:
Mr. and Mrs. J. S. Coker of Atlanta welcomed a baby girl in February, 1923. Two months later, they wrote to local station WSB, owned by the Atlanta Journal, for help naming their daughter.
The station didn’t broadcast the request. Instead, station manager Lambdin Kay came up with “Winifred Susan Beatrice,” based on the call letters of the station.
Mr. and Mrs. George F. Pollock of Atlanta welcomed a baby boy in March, 1923. Two months later, they wrote to local station WGM, owned by the Atlanta Constitution, for help naming their son.
William’s name also wasn’t crowdsourced. The station came up with “William Grady Moseley,” based on the call letters of the station. (William was for the baby’s grandfather; Grady was for orator Henry W. Grady; Moseley was for station director Lass O. Moseley.)
Ok, here’s our first real case of crowdsourcing.
R. R. Brown, pastor of the Omaha Gospel Tabernacle in Omaha, Nebraska, welcomed a baby girl on Saturday, April 21, 1923. He delivered a sermon by radio on Sunday, April 22. During the broadcast, he told listeners he’d “decided to let radio fans do the naming.”
The papers, reporting Brown’s call for baby names the following day, noted that “already he has received by telephone a number of suggestions. One of them was that he call her “Radioana.””
According to the 1930 Census, Brown’s three children were named Robert, Lois and Jean. Jean was born right around 1923.
I’m not sure whether her name came from a radio listener’s suggestion, though.
An unidentified couple wrote to radio station WOC in Davenport, Iowa, in October, 1926. They wanted radio listeners to help them name their baby girl.
The detail-deficient article didn’t reveal the outcome, but it did include a flippant flapper joke:
Proper crowdsourcing and a known name. Finally!
Lawrence and Ethel Webb Bartley of Whitesburg, Kentucky, welcomed a baby girl in January, 1927. Several weeks later, they wrote to a local radio station for help naming their daughter.
The request was broadcast. Listeners in 38 U.S. states and in Canada submitted more than 1,000 name suggestions, some of which were read on-air.
The Bartleys ended up naming their daughter Mary Lou.
In March, an op-ed writer commenting on the Bartley story praised the “innovation of appealing to radioland to name a new member of the family.” She went on to say, “We hope the custom of having radioland pick the baby’s name flourishes and spreads.”
[UPDATE, Feb. 2015: Was Mary Lou Bartley’s original first name Seroba?!]
Mr. Kenneth Smith of Des Moines, Iowa, welcomed a baby boy, his 8th child, in late 1927. He asked local radio station KSO for help naming his son.
He also offered “a fur robe to the radio listener who would suggest the best name.”
More than 200 names were suggested. The winning name, Robert Edward, was submitted by “Mrs. Thompson of Bedford.”
A prize? Some free advertising? Happened 84 years ago, but sounds utterly modern to me.
Sources:
Would you name your son Bimbo?
I ask because Bimbo was a one-hit wonder in the U.S. baby name data in 1954. Five baby boys got the name that year.
Cruel? Not necessarily.
These parents weren’t bestowing the name with the slang term in mind. (Bimbo, originally a variant of bambino, Italian for “baby,” had become a synonym for “floozie” back in the 1920s.) They’d heard it in a country song about a little boy called Bimbo. Here’s the first verse:
Bimbo is a little boy who’s got million friends
and every time he passes by, they all invite him in
He’ll clap his hands, sing and dance, and talk his baby talk
With a hole in pants, and his knees stickin’ out, he’s just big enough to walk
“Bimbo,” written circa 1953 by Rod Morris, was recorded in 1953-1954 by various performers including Gene Autry,* Ruby Wright, Pee Wee King/Redd Stewart, Eddy Howard, Lawrence Welk, Polly Possum, and Brucie Weil.
But the most successful rendition was performed by Jim Reeves, whose “Bimbo,” released in late 1953, peaked at #2 on the list of Best Selling Country & Western Records for three weeks from late January to early February, 1954.
[T]he song became wildly popular, especially with families who had children. “People were even naming their little boys ‘Bimbo,’ after the song,” [Jim’s wife] Mary said in astonishment.
Here’s a video featuring the Jim Reeves recording:
What do you think of the name Bimbo?
*This was a few years after Gene’s rendition of “Frosty the Snowman” inspired a handful of parents to name their sons Frosty.
Update, Aug. 2024: Bimbo is no longer in the U.S. baby name data! I’m not sure when the SSA made the adjustment, but this is the first time I’ve noticed it. There’s a chance the name could reappear in a future data release, though, so I will leave this post up for now.
Sources:
Second image: Clipping from Billboard magazine (6 Feb. 1954)