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

Where did the baby name Aissa come from in 1961?

Celebrity daughter Aissa on the cover of Cosmopolitan magazine (March 1961).
Aissa on Cosmo cover (Mar. 1961)

The relatively rare name Aissa started appearing in the U.S. data in the early 1960s:

  • 1963: unlisted
  • 1962: 5 baby girls named Aissa
  • 1961: 6 baby girls named Aissa [debut]
  • 1960: unlisted
  • 1959: unlisted

The reason?

Looks to be John Wayne’s daughter Aissa (pronounced ie-EES-ah), who was born in 1956 had a short acting career in the early 1960s. Her first and most notable role was that of Lisa Angelina Dickinson in the movie The Alamo (1960).

Photographs of Aissa also occasionally appeared in the newspapers. Perhaps the most prominent photo of her was the one on cover of Cosmopolitan magazine in March of 1961. It was their “diamond jubilee issue” (marking their 75th year in print) and, according to the caption, Aissa was “wearing $850,000 in Cartier diamonds.”

Aissa’s mother was John Wayne’s third wife, Pilar, and her two full siblings were named John Ethan and Marisa.

I know the story behind John Ethan’s middle name — it came from the character John Wayne played in The Searchers (the movie that launched Pippa) — but I don’t know the story behind “Aissa.” Perhaps the Waynes found it in the 1951 movie Outcast of the Islands, which featured an exotic character named Aissa (played by French actress Kerima)…?

In terms of etymology, “Aissa” comes from the French name Aïssa, which is based on the Arabic name Isa, a form of Jesus.

The name saw peak usage in the U.S. in the early 1990s:

  • 1994: 10 baby girls named Aissa
  • 1993: 20 baby girls named Aissa
  • 1992: 58 baby girls named Aissa [peak]
  • 1991: 20 baby girls named Aissa
  • 1990: 11 baby girls named Aissa

Aissa Wayne’s name was in the news a lot during 1992 due to legal troubles. In April, she testified in court against her ex-husband (a physician who had hired two assailants to attack her in 1988 amid their child custody battle). The ex-husband was convicted in May and sentenced in July. In December, Aissa won full custody of their 5-year-old daughter, Anastasia Pilar.

What are your thoughts on the name Aissa/Aïssa?

Sources:

P.S. Here are several more “delayed” celebrity baby name debuts, i.e., celebrity baby-inspired names that didn’t appear on the charts at the time of birth.

P.P.S. John Wayne’s second wife was named Esperanza, nicknamed Chata. His first was named Josephine.

Where did the baby name Trinere come from in 1990?

Trinere's self-titled debut album (1986).
Trinere album

The baby name Trinere has appeared a single time in the SSA’s baby name data so far:

  • 1992: unlisted
  • 1991: unlisted
  • 1990: 5 baby girls named Trinere [debut]
  • 1989: unlisted
  • 1988: unlisted

Where did it come from?

Miami-based freestyle vocalist Trinere, who saw the most success from the mid-1980s to the early 1990s. Although the name was a one-hit wonder, Trinere herself was not — a number of her songs ended up on Billboard’s Hip Hop and Dance Singles charts.

Trinere’s full name at birth was Trinere Veronica Farrington.

What are your thoughts on the baby name Trinere?

Sources: Trinere – Wikipedia, Rare and Obscure Music: Trinere

P.S. Another Latin freestyle singer we’ve talked about before? Lisa Lisa!

Name quotes #86

double quotation mark

Time for the monthly quote-post!

From a review of the memoir The Kennedy Chronicles by former MTV video jockey Kennedy (full name: Lisa Kennedy Montgomery):

According to Kennedy, her secret dalliance with the then-married lead singer and frontman of the Goo Goo Dolls led to one of the group’s most well-known songs, the 1995 mega-hit “Name.” To Kennedy, the lyrics hit a little to close to home: “Did you lose yourself somewhere out there? Did you get to be a star?” And then “You could hide beside me/ Maybe for a while. And I won’t tell no one your name.”

She writes: “When I asked him about it he indeed admitted the inspiration and told me there was no way all we’d shared wasn’t going to show up in his writing.”

Here’s the song:

From the funny April Fools’ Day video Pronouncing Friedemann Findeisen like a Bad-Ass German by songwriter Friedemann Findeisen [FREE-day-mahn FIND-ei-zen]:

Welcome to this German tutorial on how to pronounce my name, Friedemann Findeisen. In the past, many of you have wondered why I have such an unusual name, and why it sounds so German. Well, I am German. You just can’t tell because my lederhosen aren’t in the shot.

From the National Geographic article “Who’s the First Person in history whose name we know?“:

[T]o my great surprise—the first name in recorded history isn’t a king. Nor a warrior. Or a poet. He was, it turns out…an accountant. In his new book Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, Yuval Noah Harari goes back 33 centuries before Christ to a 5,000-year-old clay tablet found in Mesopotamia (modern Iraq).

[…]

It’s a receipt for multiple shipments of barley. The tablet says, very simply:

29,086 measures barley 37 months Kushim

(But we don’t know for sure that Kushim was a human name; it may have been a job title.)

A second theory, from the same article:

Dated to around 3100 B.C.—about a generation or two after Kushim—the tablet’s heading is, “Two slaves held by Gal-Sal.” Gal-Sal is the owner. Next come the slaves, “En-pap X and Sukkalgir.” So now we’ve got four names: an accountant, a slave owner, and two slaves.

(Some scholars are Team Kushim, other scholars are Team Gal-Sal.)

Where did the baby name Keir come from in 1963?

Actor Keir Dullea in the movie "David and Lisa" (1962).
Keir Dullea in “David and Lisa“

The compact name Keir first appeared in the U.S. baby name data in the early 1960s:

  • 1965: 6 baby boys named Keir
  • 1964: 21 baby boys named Keir
  • 1963: 13 baby boys named Keir [debut]
  • 1962: unlisted
  • 1961: unlisted

The spelling Kier debuted as well.

What was the influence?

Actor Keir Dullea, whose first big movie role was the a lead part in the offbeat romance David and Lisa (1962). He ended up winning a Golden Globe for “Most Promising Newcomer – Male” in early 1963.

He went on to appear in other movies, none more successful than Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), in which he played another David: astronaut David Bowman, who spoke the classic line, “Open the pod bay doors please, HAL.”

His full name is pronounced KEER duh-LAY, which is easy to remember if you think of the Noel Coward witticism, “Keir Dullea, gone tomorrow.” I’m not sure how his parents came up with the name Keir, but it could be an Anglicized form of the Irish name Ciar, which means “black.”

(Keir was also on TV a lot, and once appeared in an episode of the short-lived show Channing — just like Joan Hackett, whose character Djuna Phrayne had a big impact on the baby name Djuna.)

Do you like the name Keir?

Source: Keir Dullea – Wikipedia