How popular is the baby name Louis 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 Louis.

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Popularity of the baby name Louis


Posts that mention the name Louis

Alanis Morissette’s baby boy named Ever Imre

Alanis Morissette and husband Mario “Souleye” Treadway had their first child, a baby boy, on December 25. They named him Ever Imre.

They haven’t explained the significance behind the name yet, though I’m sure they will soon. (For what it’s worth, Imre, pronounced eem-reh, is a Hungarian name derived from Emmerich.)

In the meanwhile, let’s talk about a possible trend alert. After all, this is the second celebrity baby I know of named Ever. The first was Ever Gabo, Milla Jovovitch’s daughter, born in late 2007.

Here’s how frequently the baby name Ever has been used over the last decade:

Boys named EverGirls named EverTotal
200914669215
200817539214
200715517172
200614827175
200514810158
200412623149
200311722139
20029716113
20011028110
200080787

So there’s already an upward trajectory, and now not one but two celebs have jumped on the bandwagon. How high will the name go? Will it crack the top 1,000 for either gender, do you think?

Update, Mar. 2024: Alanis Morissette was recently on the PBS program “Finding Your Roots” [vid], and one of the ancestors she discussed with host Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., was her maternal grandfather Imre Feuerstein. So that explains the significance behind the middle name Imre.

Source: Rovzar, Chris. “Alanis Morissette Has Baby, Names It ‘Ever Imre’.” New York Magazine 27 Dec. 2010.

Baby born at Meadowbrook Hospital, named Meadows Brook

Meadowbrook Hospital in 1939
Meadowbrook Hospital

On July 15, 1935, Meadowbrook Hospital opened in the hamlet of East Meadow on Long Island, in New York.

Three days later, “in the modern air conditioned, sound-proof delivery room,” the first baby was born at Meadowbrook.

It was a boy — the son of Gerard and Lena Verhayden of Lynbrook.

His name? Louis Meadows Brook Verhayden.

[Here’s another baby named for the hospital she was born in.]

Sources:

Image by NARA

Baby names for aviation enthusiasts (Namestorm #5)

airplane

Love to fly the friendly skies? Then this list may be for you. Here are some names from early 20th-century aviation history:

Wilbur and Orville
American brothers Wilbur and Orville Wright built and flew the world’s first airplane in December of 1903.

Louis
French aviator Louis Blériot was the first to fly a plane across the English Channel (from France to England) in July of 1909.

Elise
French aviatrix Elise Raymonde Deroche was the first woman to receive a pilot’s license, in March of 1910.

Henri
French aviator and inventor Henri Fabre designed and flew the world’s first seaplane, also in March of 1910.

Harriet
American aviatrix Harriet Quimby was the first woman to fly across the English Channel (from England to France) in April of 1912 — one day after the sinking of the Titanic. Harriet was also the first U.S. woman to receive a pilot’s license.

John and Arthur
British aviators John Alcock (pilot) and Arthur Whitten Brown (navigator) made the first nonstop transatlantic flight (from Canada to Ireland) in June of 1919.

John and Oakley
American aviators John Macready and Oakley Kelley made the first nonstop transcontinental flight (from New York to San Diego) in May of 1923.

Charles

  • American aviator Charles Lindbergh was the first American and the first solo pilot to fly across the Atlantic (from the U.S. to France) in May of 1927.
  • American aviator Charles Yeager was the first pilot to travel faster than sound, in October of 1947.

Dieudonné and Joseph
French aviators Dieudonné Costes (pilot) and Joseph Le Brix (navigator) made the first nonstop crossing of the south Atlantic (from Senegal to Brazil) in October of 1927.

Hugh and Clyde
Hugh Herndon and Clyde Pangborn made the first nonstop transpacific flight (from Japan to the U.S.) in October of 1931.

Amelia
American aviatrix Amelia Earhart was the first woman to make a solo flight across Atlantic (from Canada to Northern Ireland) in May of 1932.

Wiley (and Winnie)
American aviator Wiley Post made the first solo round-the-world flight in July of 1933. The trip took over a week to complete. (His plane, the Winnie Mae, was named after the daughter of the plane’s original owner.)

Amy
English aviatrix Amy Johnson was the first woman to fly solo from Britain to Australia, in May of 1930.

I concentrated on airplanes, but the history of aviation goes back hundreds of years and covers kites, gliders, balloons, blimps, airships, helicopters, and so forth. What other aviation names can you come up with (from any era, using any aircraft)?

Update, 7/2021: Here are a few more aviators to choose from: Jack Vilas, Belvin Maynard, Lester Maitland, Bessica Raiche, Turi Widerøe.

Sources: Famous Firsts in Aviation, American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Wikipedia

Image: Adapted from Air Canada Boeing 777-333ER by MarcusObal under CC BY-SA 3.0.

What popularized the baby name Deanna in the 1930s?

Deanna Durbin in trailer for the movie "Three Smart Girls" (1936)
Deanna Durbin

During the latter half of the 1930s, the baby name Deanna saw an extreme rise in usage:

  • 1939: 1,805 baby girls named Deanna [rank: 133rd]
  • 1938: 2,254 baby girls named Deanna [rank: 115th]
  • 1937: 1,624 baby girls named Deanna [rank: 139th]
  • 1936: 77 baby girls named Deanna [rank: 770th]
  • 1935: 29 baby girls named Deanna
  • 1934: 15 baby girls named Deanna

A number of similar names also saw a spike in usage in 1937:

1935193619371938
Deanna29771,6242,254
Deanne1222230231
Deann8136598
Deana20204263
Deeann..18*14
Deeanna...7*
Deeanne...5*
*Debut

Deanna was the baby name that saw the highest relative rise in usage from 1936 to 1937, and Deanne was third on that list. (Second and fourth were Noretta and Noreta — check out the Norita post for the explanation.)

Also rising were the Di- variants, like Dianna, along with the simple name Dee.

Finally, the variant Deeann was the top debut name of 1937.

So…what kicked off this sudden trendiness of Deanna?

Singer and actress Deanna Durbin.

She became famous upon the late 1936 release of the musical comedy Three Smart Girls.

In the film, which was a box office success and received several Oscar nominations, she played the youngest of three sisters (named Joan, Kay and Penny).

A full-page advertisement for the film that ran in Life magazine described Durbin as the “greatest soprano since Jenny Lind.”

Deanna was born Edna Mae Durbin in Canada in 1921. She started out as a singer, but began appearing in films as a teenager. Universal Pictures gave her the stage name “Deanna” when she was about 14.

Louis B. Mayer himself directed her “renaming” process. Durbin was all right, but “Edna Mae” was too ordinary. She was sometimes called “Deedee” at home, and everyone thought matching initials would be attractive for an actress’s name. Edna Mae like the name “Diana,” but she pronounced it “Dee-anna” and a sharp-eared publicity man jumped on the difference. “Dee-anna” would be original and have cachet. So Edna Mae Durbin, renamed Deanna Durbin, was set to go into her first feature film.

The popularity of the name Deanna declined in the ’40s and ’50s, but reached new heights in the ’60s and ’70s, landing in the top 100 from 1969 to 1971. These days it’s still given to several hundred babies per year, but no longer ranks inside the top 1,000.

Do you like the name Deanna? Do you like it more or less than Diana?

Sources:

P.S. The name Kizzy saw a similarly steep rise in usage exactly four decades later…