How popular is the baby name Lisa 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 Lisa.

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Popularity of the baby name Lisa


Posts that mention the name Lisa

What gave the baby name Michelle a boost in 1966?

The Beatles' album "Rubber Soul" (1965)
Beatles album

The French name Michelle was already a top-20 girl name in the U.S. when it suddenly saw a massive increase in usage in the mid-1960s:

  • 1968: 33,222 baby girls named Michelle [rank: 2nd]
  • 1967: 30,826 baby girls named Michelle [rank: 3rd]
  • 1966: 27,158 baby girls named Michelle [rank: 4th]
  • 1965: 16,215 baby girls named Michelle [rank: 18th]
  • 1964: 16,182 baby girls named Michelle [rank: 23rd]

Michelle’s jump of nearly 11,000 baby girls from 1965 to 1966 easily qualifies as the steepest girl-name rise of the year. In fact, the jump currently ranks 10th on the list of top girl-name rises of all time.

So, what was drawing extra attention to the name Michelle in 1966?

“Michelle” by the Beatles. The love ballad — and the only Beatles song to feature French lyrics — was a track on the British band’s sixth studio album, Rubber Soul, which came out in December of 1965.

Here’s what “Michelle” sounds like:

“Michelle” was never released as a single in the U.S., so it never ranked on Billboard‘s Hot 100 chart. Despite this, it was played frequently on the radio, and ended up winning the Grammy Award for Song of the Year in March of 1967.

The song started out as a French-sounding ditty that Paul McCartney would play at parties in Liverpool during the late 1950s (when Left Bank bohemian culture was trendy in England). In the mid-1960s, at the suggestion of John Lennon, Paul developed the ditty into a proper song. He wrote the lyrics around the French feminine name Michelle, and came up with the rhyming phrase ma belle (“my beauty”) and the lyrics sont les mots qui vont très bien ensemble (“are the words that go very well together”) with some help from a French-speaking friend.

Thanks largely to the song, the name Michelle was one of the top five girl names in the nation from 1966 to 1974. Though it ranked second a total of four times, it never managed to take the top spot. (It was denied by Lisa during the late 1960s, then Jennifer during the early 1970s.)

What are your thoughts on the name Michelle? (Do you know anyone named after the song “Michelle”?)

P.S. Coincidentally, Paul McCartney was married for nearly three decades to Linda Eastman, whose first name inspired the 1946 song “Linda,” which turned Linda into the fastest-rising girl name of all time from 1946 to 1947.

Sources: Michelle (song) – Wikipedia, Michelle – The Beatles Bible, SSA

Baby born to Elvis’ granddaughter, named after Elvis’ birthplace

Elvis Presley's childhood home in Tupelo, Mississippi
Elvis Presley’s childhood home

Actress Riley Keogh — daughter of Lisa Marie Presley and granddaughter of Elvis Presley — welcomed a baby girl via surrogate in August of 2022. A year later, in a Vanity Fair cover story, she revealed that her daughter’s name was Tupelo Storm.

Tupelo’s first name is a reference to the northern Mississippi city of Tupelo (pronounced TOO-puh-loh), which is where Elvis was born in 1935. (The Presley family didn’t move to Memphis, Tennessee, until Elvis was a young teenager.)

The city’s name, which was inspired by the abundance of tupelo gum trees in the area, derives from the Creek words ito, meaning “tree,” and opilwa, meaning “swamp.”

Keogh said:

It’s funny because we picked her name before the Elvis movie. I was like, ‘This is great because it’s not really a well-known word or name in relation to my family — it’s not like Memphis or something.’ Then when the Elvis movie came out, it was like, Tupelo this and Tupelo that. I was like, ‘Oh no.’ But it’s fine.

(The biopic Elvis was released in June of 2022.)

The baby’s middle name commemorates Riley Keogh’s late brother, Benjamin Storm Keough.

So far, the name Tupelo has never appeared in the SSA data — but do you think it could in the future? What are your thoughts on Tupelo as a baby name?

Sources:

Image: Adapted from Tupelo EAP birthplace IMG 2649 by Bjoertvedt under CC BY-SA 4.0.

Name quotes #118: Dana, Lisa, Crusoe

double quotation mark

April is here, so it’s time for another batch of name quotes!

From an Instagram post by Irish television presenter Lisa Cannon:

I always feel oddly yet loosely connected to [the late Lisa Marie Presley] as I was an only child too and was named after her… Lisa Sara Marie Cannon – Lisa Marie because my father like the rest of the world was an Elvis fan and my middle name Sara after Bob Dylan’s Wife. My father at the time was a budding Rock Journalist for Hot Press Magazine & the NME in London so music of all genres was always playing in our home. When people ask you the origin of your name or who your named after it was always “Elvis’ daughter & Bob Dylan’s Wife” which always got a smile.

From a recent article about YouTube influencers The Newbys:

Tiny traveller Crusoe Newby is less than two years old — but has already tottered his way around 24 different countries.

[…]

Named after fictional castaway Robinson Crusoe, the hero of the 18th century novel by Daniel Defoe, he had travelled to 11 countries while still in the womb. But his official tally of 24 have all been racked up since his birth. His adventure started when Tara and John decided to sell their Bristol home and convert a £3,000 van to travel the globe in May 2020.

[…]

“Robinson Crusoe is John’s favourite book of all time because it inspired him as a young boy to think of a life of adventure.”

From the 2020 obituary of Dana Marie Ek in Fauquier Now:

Dana was born on October 19, 1995, in Astoria, Oregon. She was named after the Dana Glacier — located deep in the wilds of the Glacier Peak Wilderness Area, because her father thought it was the most beautiful place on heaven or earth.

From a 2007 article called “You Are What Your Name Says You Are” in the New York Times:

Sociologists like Mr. Besnard observed that first names [in France] were often quick markers of social and educational status. As another Libération reader, an elementary school teacher, pointed out: “I can often guess the ‘profile’ of a child thanks to the first name. A ‘Maxime,’ a ‘Louise,’ a ‘Kevin,’ a ‘Lolita.’ It’s sad, but that’s how it often works.” That is, Maxime and Louise probably have wealthy parents, while Kevin and Lolita are more likely to have a working- or lower-middle-class background.

Indeed, bourgeois French parents are unlikely to give their children “Anglo-Saxon” names; Jennifer was the most popular name for girls from 1984 to 1986, but it’s a safe bet few Jennifers came from well-educated families. (The craze is commonly explained by the success of the TV series “Hart to Hart” in France at that time — Jennifer Hart was one of the title characters — while “Beverly Hills, 90210,” featuring a popular character named Dylan McKay, is sometimes blamed for the explosion of Dylans a few years later.)

What popularized the baby name Kennedy in the 1990s?

The character Kennedy Russo from the TV series "Blossom" (1991-1995)
Kennedy from “Blossom“

The baby name Kennedy — which had been popularized as a boy name by U.S. President John F. Kennedy in the 1960s — started seeing much higher usage as a girl name in the 1990s.

Here’s the data:

Girls named KennedyBoys named Kennedy
19971,624 [rank: 186th]185 [rank: 796th]
19961,418 [rank: 208th]169 [rank: 840th]
19951,235 [rank: 229th]159 [rank: 860th]
1994472 [rank: 524th]142 [rank: 923rd]
199313482
19924788
19913360

In 1993, the name was given to more girls than boys for the first time. The year after that, it entered the girls’ top 1,000 for the first time. (It also re-entered the boys’ top 1,000, curiously.)

What caused the switch, and the rise?

I believe it’s a blend of a couple of things.

Kennedy hosting the MTV series "Alternative Nation" (1992-1997) in early 1993
Kennedy the MTV VJ

The switch could have been due to the influence of mononymous MTV video jockey Kennedy (whose birth name was Lisa Kennedy Montgomery).

Big-haired, bespectacled Kennedy hosted MTV’s popular weeknight show Alternative Nation (1992-1997), which featured hit songs by alt-rock bands like Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Oasis, Alice In Chains, Nine Inch Nails, Smashing Pumpkins, and Bush.

The name’s steep rise in usage around 1995, however, was more likely fueled by a little girl from a sitcom.

The fifth and final season of the series Blossom (1991-1995) included two new main characters: Blossom’s English step-mother Carol (played by Finola Hughes) and Blossom’s 6-year-old step-sister Kennedy (played by Courtney Chase). TV critics were not impressed by Kennedy’s feigned English accent, but viewers were clearly impressed by her name.

The Irish/Scottish surname Kennedy can be traced back to the Gaelic personal name Ceannéidigh, which is made up of the words ceann, meaning “head,” and éidigh, meaning “unseemly, ugly.”

What are your thoughts on the baby name Kennedy? Do you prefer it as a girl name, or as a boy name?

Sources:

P.S. Name quotes #86 includes a quote from MTV’s Kennedy.