How popular is the baby name Lee 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 Lee.

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Popularity of the Baby Name Lee


Posts that Mention the Name Lee

What popularized the baby name Kayleigh in the 1980s?

The Marillion single "Kayleigh" (1985)
“Kayleigh” single

According to the U.S. baby name data, the name Kayleigh became very popular all of a sudden in the mid-1980s:

  • 1987: 537 baby girls named Kayleigh [rank: 415th]
  • 1986: 748 baby girls named Kayleigh [rank: 321st]
  • 1985: 211 baby girls named Kayleigh [rank: 794th]
  • 1984: 7 baby girls named Kayleigh [debut]
  • 1983: unlisted
  • 1982: unlisted

Kayleigh was the fastest-rising baby name of 1985, in fact.

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

What made it so trendy?

The song “Kayleigh” (1985) by British rock band Marillion.

Several of the band’s singles had done well in the UK up to that point, but the rock ballad “Kayleigh” was their first (and, so far, only) song to reach the U.S. Hot 100, peaking at #74 in late October, 1985.

The lead singer of the band had written the song with several past girlfriends in mind, but the name of the song was inspired by one woman in particular. He explained:

I’d wanted to write a song about a girlfriend I’d split up with, whose name was Kay. Which of course we couldn’t do. So we added her middle name, Lee, and it became Kayleigh instead. […] But it wasn’t just about Kay, it was inspired by three or four different people in my life.

Interestingly, the entire Kaylee name-group was already on the rise before the song was released in mid-1985. For instance, the most popular spelling of the name, Kaylee — which ultimately peaked at 26th in 2009 — jumped well into the top 1,000 (824th) in 1984. The same year, the spelling Kaylie was the 25th-fastest rising girl name (relatively speaking), and girl-name debuts included Caylie, Caleigh, Cayley, Kailie, and Cailey — not to mention Kayleigh itself.

So the song didn’t exactly kick things off. No doubt it contributed to the name’s trendiness, though. It does seem to have given a discernible boost to the spellings Kaleigh, Kalee, Kalie, Kaeleigh, and Kaileigh. And it may have been behind the debut of Cayleigh in 1986.

So…why was the Kaylee name-group already picking up stream in 1984? I don’t know for certain, but I can point to a couple of possible contributing factors:

  • The trendiness of Kayla in the early ’80s, due largely to a soap opera character: Kayla Brady from Days of Our Lives.
  • The trendiness of Ashley in the early ’80s, due in part to another soap opera character: Ashley Abbott from The Young and the Restless.

What are your thoughts on the baby name Kayleigh? (Do you like this spelling, or do you prefer one of the other spellings?)

Sources:

P.S. Marillion’s 2nd-biggest song, “Lavender” (1985) — which was the track right after “Kayleigh” on the Misplaced Childhood album — may have given the baby name Lavender a nudge in the mid-’80s.

P.P.S. The band’s name, pronounced mar-IH-lee-un, was based on the title of the novel The Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien.

Where did the baby name Celynn come from in 1964?

Contestant Celynn McDonald on the TV game show "The Celebrity Game" (Jun. 1964)
Celynn McDonald on “The Celebrity Game“

The name Celynn has only ever appeared in the U.S. baby name data a single time, in 1964:

  • 1966: unlisted
  • 1965: unlisted
  • 1964: 7 baby girls named Celynn [debut]
  • 1963: unlisted
  • 1962: unlisted

Where did it come from?

Television!

A short-lived game show called The Celebrity Game was on TV in the mid-1960s. Here’s how host Carl Reiner explained the show:

We ask our celebrity panel a question on some popular topic that can be answered yes or no. Then our three players each get a chance to pick a star and tell us how they think the star voted.

An episode that aired in June of 1964 featured a contestant named Celynn McDonald (first name pronounced seh-LYN). She was described as “a law student and a perpetual movie fan.”

In Celynn’s episode, the three questions posed to the 9-person celebrity panel (which included Mickey Rooney, Gypsy Rose Lee, and Lee Marvin) were:

  • Do romantic screen heroes tend to make wives satisfied at home?
  • Should a woman marry a man ten years younger than she?
  • Should the United States government subsidize children as they do in France?

Alas, Celynn did not win the game. But her fifteen minutes of fame did shine a spotlight on her unusual name, and this, in turn, increased the usage of the name just enough to boost it into the SSA’s baby name data (which, due to privacy concerns, only includes names given to at least five babies per year).

What are your thoughts on the name Celynn? Would you use it?

Sources: The Celebrity Game – IMDb, SSA

Where did the baby name Draven come from in 1994?

The character Eric Draven (played by Brandon Lee) from the movie "The Crow" (1994).
Eric Draven from “The Crow“

The name Draven first appeared in the U.S. baby name data in 1994. Rather unusually, it debuted for both genders in the very same year:

Boys named DravenGirls named Draven
1996163 (rank: 853rd)16
1995182 (rank: 797th)16
199454*9*
1993..
1992..
*Debut

Here’s a visual:

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

Where did the name Draven come from?

The dark movie The Crow, which was released in May of 1994.

The film was set in “some decaying urban hell […] where armed gangs prowl the alleyways and common people are driven inside to merely survive.”

The main character was resurrected rock star Eric Draven. He and his fiancée had been murdered by gang members the night before their wedding. Exactly one year later, Eric rose from the dead to avenge their deaths.

The Crow starred actor Brandon Lee, son of martial arts superstar Bruce Lee. Sadly, Brandon was fatally wounded by a prop gun during filming. He died in March of 1993. The same year, usage of the compound name Brandonlee more than tripled:

  • 1995: 12 baby boys named Brandonlee
  • 1994: 11 baby boys named Brandonlee
  • 1993: 20 baby boys named Brandonlee
  • 1992: 6 baby boys named Brandonlee
  • 1991: unlisted

What are your thoughts on the baby name Draven?

Sources:

(Other dual-gender debuts include Chaffee, Dasani, Dondi, Illya, Rikishi, and Sundown.)

Baby name story: Tex

Saxophone player Tex Beneke (1914-2000)
Tex Beneke (in 1947)

Tex Vertmann was born in Estonia in the mid-1970s. The very American-sounding first name “Tex” is unusual in Estonia — how did he come to have it?

Vertmann said his parents used to spend the best moments of their life together at the cinema, watching all kinds of foreign movies that had either been left behind by the Germans or bought by the Soviet Union from the U.S.

Estonia was part of the USSR from 1940 to 1991, and for several years during WWII it was occupied by Nazi Germany.

Among these were the Italian film “Return to Sorrento” and “Waterloo Bridge” […] But Vertmann’s parents just adored “Sun Valley Serenade,” in which the famous Glenn Miller conducted his orchestra.

These films were released in 1945, 1940, and 1941, respectively.

The name of one of Miller’s band players, the tenor-sax, was Tex Beneke. Vertmann remembered [his] parents also liked the Miller song “Chattanooga Choo-Choo,” which begins with the line “Hello Tex!” That’s how Vertmann got his very original name in the times of “deep socialism.”

The movie Sun Valley Serenade, which starred Sonja Henie, includes a sequence in which Texas-born Gordon Lee “Tex” Beneke both sings and whistles “Chattanooga Choo Choo.” The lyrics begin: Hi there Tex, whatchu say?

Americans of the early 1940s (but not the 1970s!) would have agreed with the Vertmanns about the song: a whopping 1.2 million copies of “Chattanooga Choo Choo” were sold by early 1942.

In recognition of this accomplishment, Miller’s record label presented him with a framed, gold-plated copy of the single — the very first gold record. This paved the way for RIAA-issued gold records in the late 1950s.

Sources: