How popular is the baby name Maria 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 Maria.

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Popularity of the baby name Maria


Posts that mention the name Maria

The names Seventeen, Eighteen, and Nineteen

Baker family on the 1880 U.S. Census
Baker family, 1880 U.S. Census

Yesterday’s post on the Rosado family of Brazil reminded me of a Tennessee family I spotted in the 1880 U.S. Census.

The parents were Stephen and Maria Baker, ages 52 and 45, and the three youngest children were listed as…

  • Billy (?) Seventeen (male, age 4)
  • Lady Eighteen (female, age 3)
  • Aurilla Nineteen (female, age 0)

My hunch is that they were the 17th, 18th, and 19th children, but I haven’t been able to verify it yet.

The older children still at home in 1880 were named Millie, Buddy, Willie, and Albert.

On the 1870 U.S. Census, the family’s children were listed as Rachel, James, Francis, Florence, Milley, Budie, and Wm (an abbreviation for William).

The Rosado family of Brazil

Statue of Jerônimo Dix-Sept Rosado
Jerônimo Dix-Sept Rosado

Brazilian pharmacist Jerônimo Rosado (b. 1861) had three children with his first wife, Maria. After Maria died, he married Maria’s sister, Isaura, and they welcomed 18 more children.

Notably, nearly all of the 21 Rosado children were given number-names. Each number-name corresponded to that particular child’s position in the birth order. Here’s the full list:

  1. Jerônimo (b. 1890)
  2. Laurentino (b. 1891)
  3. Tércio (b. 1892) – tércio is a Portuguese form of tertius, meaning “third” in Latin
  4. Isaura Quarto (b. 1894) – quarto means “fourth” in Portuguese
  5. Laurentino Quinto (b. 1896) – quinto means “fifth” in Portuguese
  6. Isaura Sexta (b. 1897) – sexta means “sixth” in Portuguese
  7. Jerônima Sétima (b. 1898) – sétima means “seventh” in Portuguese
  8. Maria Oitava (b. 1899) – oitava means “eighth” in Portuguese
  9. Isauro Nono (b. 1901) – nono means “ninth” in Portuguese
  10. Vicência Décima (b. 1902) – décima means “tenth” in Portuguese
  11. Laurentina Onzième (b. 1903) – onzième means “eleventh” in French
  12. Laurentino Duodécimo (b. 1905) – duodécimo means “twelfth” in Portuguese
  13. Isaura Trezième (b. 1906) – trezième means “thirteenth” in French
  14. Isaura Quatorzième (b. 1907) – quatorzième means “fourteenth” in French
  15. Jerônimo Quinzième (b. 1908) – quinzième means “fifteenth” in French
  16. Isaura Seize (b. 1910) – seize means “sixteen” in French
  17. Jerônimo Dix-Sept (b. 1911) – dix-sept means “seventeen” in French
  18. Jerônimo Dix-Huit (b. 1912) – dix-huit means “eighteen” in French
  19. Jerônimo Dix-Neuf (b. 1913) – dix-neuf means “nineteen” in French
  20. Jerônimo Vingt (b. 1918) – vingt means “twenty” in French
  21. Jerônimo Vingt-Un (b. 1920) – vingt-un means “twenty-one” in French

Notice how the number-names shifted from Portuguese to French, and from ordinal to cardinal.

Several members of the family had successful careers in politics. For instance, patriarch Jerônimo served as the mayor of the city of Mossoró from 1917 to 1919. Dix-Sept held the same office from 1948 to 1950. Vingt held it from 1953 to 1958. And Dix-Huit served as the mayor of Mossoró three times: 1973-1977, 1983-1988, and 1993-1996. (The city’s airport is named after Dix-Sept; its theater is named after Dix-Huit.)

What are your thoughts about these names?

Sources: Os Rosado – Itaú Cultural, Jerônimo Dix-Sept Rosado – Wikipedia, Jerônimo Dix-Huit Rosado – Wikipedia, Lista de prefeitos de Mossoró – Wikipédia
Image: Adapted from Statue of Jerônimo Dix-Sept Rosado by Patrick under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Baby born with heart outside body, named Corazon (“heart”)

María Corazón Rafael, 1939
María Corazón

On August 7, 1939, a 7-pound baby girl was born in a maternity hospital in the Tondo slum district of Manila, the capital of the Philippines.

Everything about the baby was normal except for one thing: she was born with her heart outside of her body.

As doctors debated what to do, they protected her tiny heart with a stemless cocktail glass.

She slept and ate normally, though her crib was lined with hot water bottles and she was fed with an eye-dropper. Whenever she cried, her exposed heart would beat faster.

Her mother, Esperanza Rafael, was told about her daughter’s condition several days after the birth. By then, a Catholic priest had already baptized her with the name María Corazón, Spanish for “Mary Heart.” (Typically the name María Corazón refers to the Virgin Mary, but, in this case, of course, it also referred to the baby’s dire medical condition.)

Esperanza attributed her daughter’s malformation to her worship of a picture of the Sacred Heart, which features the exposed heart of Jesus Christ.

Visitors flocked to see María Corazón. One of these visitors was Aurora Quezón, wife of Philippine president Manuel Quezón. Another was Manila Mayor Juan Posadas, who “told doctors to spare no efforts to save the child … he would pay all expenses.”

María Corazón’s father, a 31-year-old mining company clerk and law student, turned down various commercial offers, including “a $10,000 offer by a Manila sportsman to take the baby to the New York World’s Fair by clipper plane.”

The doctors refused to risk María’s life by performing an operation, but they did bring in a movie camera to record the baby and her exposed heart.

The resultant film was to be donated to medical science, said Dr. Guillermo del Castillo, who delivered Maria, for study in the hope that some technique could be devised to correct such future abnormalities should it fail to aid its donor.

After living a total of 162 hours and 25 minutes, baby María Corazón died of bronchial pneumonia on August 14.

Sources:

  • “Baby Born in Philippines With Heart Outside Body.” Milwaukee Journal 8 Aug. 1939: 6.
  • “Credits Worship for Baby With Heart Outside Body.” New London Evening Day 9 Aug. 1939: 9.
  • “News Summary.” Philippine Magazine. 36.9 (1939): 358.
  • “Operation on Baby Ruled Out.” Leader-Post 10 Aug. 1939: 5.
  • “Outside Heart Baby Dies After Living for Week in Hospital in Manila.” Evening Independent 14 Aug. 1939: 3.
  • “People in The News.” Life 28 Aug. 1939: 20.
  • “Picture Held Reason for Malformation.” Leader-Post 9 Aug. 1939: 1.
  • Wilson, Richard C. “Child With Heart Outside Body Amazes Entire Medical Profession.” Bend Bulletin 10 Aug. 1939: 1.

Image: Clipping from Life magazine (28 Aug. 1939)

What popularized the baby name Mariah in the early 1990s?

Mariah Carey's self-titled debut album (1990)
Mariah Carey album

This post is ultimately about Mariah Carey, but, before we get to her, let’s start with some backstory regarding the name Mariah…

In 1941, the bestselling book Storm by author George R. Stewart was published. The book — innovative for its time — featured an extratropical cyclone as a protagonist. And that cyclone had a name: “Maria.” (A junior meteorologist in the story gave female names to all the storms he tracked.)

Stewart wished for the name Maria to be pronounced mah-RYE-ah (as opposed to mah-REE-ah), according to the book’s introduction:

Another little point — although I don’t really care particularly, still I always thought of Maria and pronounced the name in the old-fashioned English and American way. The soft Spanish pronunciation is fine for some heroines, but our Maria here is too big for any man to embrace and much too boisterous. So put the accent on the second syllable, and pronounce it “rye.”

The book "Storm" (1941) by George Stewart.
“Storm” by George Stewart

A decade later, songwriting team Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe were inspired by the book to write the wistful ballad “They Call the Wind Maria” — which retained that mah-RYE-ah pronunciation. The song was featured in their musical Paint Your Wagon, which ran on Broadway from November of 1951 to July of 1952.

Nearly two decades after that, in late 1969, a movie version of Paint Your Wagon (starring Clint Eastwood) came out. In the film, the song “They Call the Wind Maria” [vid] was sung by Harve Presnell.

Several months later, in March of 1970, future pop star Mariah Carey was born in New York to a former opera singer (mother) and an aeronautical engineer (father). Her parents decided to name her after the song, but added an “h” in order to emphasize the nonstandard mah-RYE-ah pronunciation.

Carey kicked off her prodigious singing career with a string of #1 hits: “Vision of Love” (1990), “Love Takes Time” (1990), “Someday” (1991), “I Don’t Wanna Cry” (1991), and “Emotions” (1991). Her success on the charts popularized the baby name Mariah during the early 1990s:

  • 1993: 4,092 baby girls named Mariah [rank: 81st]
  • 1992: 4,711 baby girls named Mariah [rank: 74th]
  • 1991: 5,192 baby girls named Mariah [rank: 69th]
  • 1990: 1,103 baby girls named Mariah [rank: 259th]
  • 1989: 399 baby girls named Mariah [rank: 562nd]
  • 1988: 424 baby girls named Mariah [rank: 521st]

The name Mariah was one of the top 100 girl names in the U.S. from 1991 to 2001, and again from 2005 to 2011.

So, in a sense, the thousands of babies named for Mariah Carey in the early 1990s actually have a fictional storm from the early 1940s to thank for their name.

But that’s not all. The book Storm also “helped to popularize the idea of naming hurricanes,” so it had a hand in naming Barbara, Hazel, Andrew, and all the other babies with hurricane-inspired names.

What are your thoughts on the name Mariah?

P.S. In the Broadway musical Hamilton, the first name of Alexander Hamilton’s mistress Maria Reynolds is pronounced mah-RYE-ah. Regarding this pronunciation, playwright Lin-Manuel Miranda cites historian Ron Chernow, who stated in his book Alexander Hamilton (2004) that Maria’s name was “probably pronounced ‘Mariah.'”

Sources: