In yesterday’s post about the name Castara I mentioned a medicine called Castoria, which was a senna-based laxative made for children.
Castoria was developed in the mid-19th century by Massachusetts doctor Samuel Pitcher, who patented the medicine in 1868 and sold it as “Pitcher’s Castoria.” Three years later, the formula was purchased by the Centaur Company (headed by Charles H. Fletcher) and renamed “Fletcher’s Castoria.”
Advertising was the key to Castoria’s success. The Centaur Company “became a pioneer in mass marketing […] distributing millions of printed trade cards, running long-standing advertisements in newspapers and magazines, and painting the sides of hundreds of buildings.” (Case in point: You can see a massive Fletcher’s Castoria ad on the side of a building during the opening seconds of this clip of a train ride on the Brooklyn Bridge, recorded in 1899 by none other than Thomas Edison.) Castoria’s ubiquitous advertisements were so effective that the medicine continued to sell well for many decades — long after its patent had expired in 1885.
So, was Castoria ever used as a human name?
Yes! In fact, Castoria popped up in the U.S. baby name data for the first and only time in 1919:
- 1921: unlisted
- 1920: unlisted
- 1919: 5 baby girls named Castoria [debut]
- 1918: unlisted
- 1917: unlisted
But the SSA’s data doesn’t give a full picture of the name’s actual usage.
Records reveal that hundreds of U.S. babies were named Castoria, and that the majority of these babies were born after the medicine was put on the market. Some examples…
- Castoria Beatrice Nash (born in 1885 in Texas)
- Castoria Fults (b. 1889 in Kentucky)
- Castoria Cavender (b. 1890 in Texas)
- Castoria Duckworth (b. 1895 in Mississippi)
- Castoria Wilson (b. 1901 in Ohio)
- Castoria Talton (b. 1903 in Texas)
- Fletcher Castoria Kesterson (b. 1904 in Arkansas)
- Castoria Harvey (b. 1910 in Kentucky)
- Castoria Hemphill (b. 1912 in Texas)
- Castoria Duncan (b. 1916 in Mississippi)
- Castoria Vernel Livingston (b. 1922 in South Carolina)
- Castoria Campbell (b. 1925 in Kentucky)
- Castoria Watson (b. circa 1927 in Louisiana)
- Castoria Dolsberry (b. 1935 in North Carolina)
- Castoria White (b. 1936 in Florida)
- Castoria Williams (b. 1944 in Mississippi)
So, how did the medicine come to be called Castoria?
The inventor (Dr. Pitcher) named it after castor oil, a well-known laxative. (Marketing copy from the mid-1870s states, “Castoria is more than a substitute for Castor Oil.”) Castor oil, in turn, was likely named after an older medicine, castoreum — an oily fluid produced by beavers. And castoreum’s name is simply based on castor, the Latin word for “beaver.”
Interestingly, Fletcher’s Castoria remains on the market to this day, though it’s now called “Fletcher’s Laxative.”
P.S. Some of the earliest Castoria ads were rhymed verse that invariably paired “Castoria” with the name “Victoria.” One poem, for instance, included the lines: “The darling girls all named Victoria / And with the boys, they have Castoria.”
P.P.S. Speaking of babies named for laxatives, here’s Laxative Bromo Quinine Crim…
Sources:
- Fletcher’s Laxative – Wikipedia
- The Centaur Company – Wikipedia
- Steensma, David P. and Robert A. Kyle. “Charles Fletcher, The Centaur Company, and Proprietary Medicine Revenue Stamps.” Mayo Clinic Proceedings, Volume 92, Issue 9, e127-e128.
- Terrell, Ellen. “About Those Ubiquitous Castoria Ads.” Inside Adams [Library of Congress blog] 13 Jul. 2017.
- The Complex Case of Castor’s Etymology – Bill Casselman’s Canadian Word of the Day
- Castoria Advertisement. Gem of the West and Soldiers Friend Feb. 1874: 40.
- “Good Babies” [Castoria Advertisement]. Harper’s Weekly 5 Nov 1881: 750.
- FamilySearch.org
- SSA
Images: Clipping from the Holly Chieftain (18 Jun. 1915); clipping from the Chicago Tribune (16 Dec. 1923)
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