How popular is the baby name Marylou 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 Marylou.
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The baby name Marylou was generally on the decline during the second half of the 20th century, but there was a conspicuous spike in usage in 1961 specifically:
1963: 207 baby girls named Marylou [rank: 708th]
1962: 207 baby girls named Marylou [rank: 719th]
1961: 300 baby girls named Marylou [rank: 580th]
1960: 227 baby girls named Marylou [rank: 675th]
1959: 223 baby girls named Marylou [rank: 670th]
You can see it on the graph:
What caused the spike?
The Ricky Nelson song “Hello Mary Lou” (1961), which peaked at #9 on Billboard‘s Hot 100 chart in May of 1961.
It was written by Gene Pitney, but sounded enough like the earlier song “Merry, Merry Lou” [vid] by Cayet Mangiaracina that the two musicians are now credited as co-authors.
Here’s “Hello Mary Lou”:
The song was released as the B-side to Nelson’s #1 hit “Travelin’ Man.” It was also included on his sixth studio album, Rick Is 21.
That album title is notable because, on his 21st birthday, Nelson — born Eric Hilliard Nelson in 1940 — officially changed his recording name from “Ricky Nelson” to “Rick Nelson.”
The name change was a hard sell, though, because audiences had known him for so long as Ricky. He’d gone by “Ricky” on his family’s long-running sitcom, The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet (on radio and/or television from 1944 to 1966), and he’d continued to use “Ricky” when he launched his recording career in 1957. (His first five albums were called Ricky, Ricky Nelson, Ricky Sings Again, Songs by Ricky, and More Songs by Ricky.)
One of the ways he promoted his songs — “Hello Mary Lou” included — was by performing them at the end of weekly Ozzie and Harriet TV episodes. (Elvis Presley was a fan of these musical segments, incidentally.)
Getting back to Mary Lou…what are your thoughts on the compound name Marylou? Would you consider using it?
And, which song you like better: “Hello Mary Lou” from 1961, or “Mary Lou” from 1926?
P.S. In April of 1963, Rick Nelson married 17-year-old Kristin Harmon. Later the same year, she began appearing regularly (as “Kris”) on Ozzie and Harriet. As a result, the names Kristin and Kris both saw increased usage in 1963.
The baby name Marylou was on the rise in the 1920s, but usage increased sharply for a couple of years in the middle of the decade:
1929: 183 baby girls named Marylou [rank: 498th]
1928: 183 baby girls named Marylou [rank: 512th]
1927: 281 baby girls named Marylou [rank: 410th]
1926: 146 baby girls named Marylou [rank: 588th]
1925: 82 baby girls named Marylou [rank: 824th]
Here’s the popularity graph:
Why?
Because of the song “Mary Lou,” which was composed in early 1926 by Abe Lyman, George Waggner, and J. Russel Robinson.
The first recording of the song was released by Abe Lyman’s own California Orchestra.
Recordings by other orchestras soon followed. They were released during the remainder of 1926 and into early 1927.
The song became a hit for both Abe Lyman and the Ipana Troubadours, whose version was released in October of 1926. (The Troubadours had a radio show sponsored by Ipana Toothpaste, hence their name.)
Here’s the song:
(The company that published Abe Lyman’s rendition of the song, Brunswick Records, often included Spanish-language translations of song titles on their record labels. For name-title “Mary Lou,” they chose the translation “Maria Luisa.”)
Here’s a snippet of the lyrics (which seem to reference an upcoming wedding):
Why for miles around they’re waiting, to start their celebrating, when you say “I do,” Mary Lou!
A baby girl born in Kentucky in early 1927 was given the radio-crowdsourced name Seroba Mary Lou Bartley. I still don’t know quite where Seroba came from, but it’s probable that Mary Lou was suggested by radio listeners familiar with the trendy song “Mary Lou.”
Sources:
Jasen, David A. A Century of American Popular Music. NY: Routledge, 2002.
If you were paying attention to sports that summer, no doubt you’ll recall the source: Ecaterina Szabo, the Romanian gymnast who battled it out with Mary Lou Retton at the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. (Romania was the only Eastern Bloc country that did not boycott the ’84 Games.)
Ecaterina Szabo, 17 years old at the time, was the most successful competitor overall at the 1984 Summer Games, winning four golds and one silver. (In second place was American track and field athlete Carl Lewis.) Mary Lou Retton, who was 16 years old, won one gold, two silvers, and two bronzes.
But what most people remember is Retton coming from behind to beat Szabo in “the big one” — the women’s individual all-around competition — by a mere five-hundredths of a point. (The usage of the baby name Marylou increased in both 1984 and 1985 as a result.)
Ecaterina Szabo, an ethnic Hungarian, was born with the first name Katalin. She told Romanian news site Transylvania Now that her name was changed (from the Hungarian form of Katherine to the Romanian form of Katherine) in order to mask her background:
It happened in 1980 when she participated at the Youth European Championship in Lyon. “This was the place where I arrived as Katalin, and left as Ecaterina,” she remembers. “The name change happened without my knowledge. Actually I didn’t have the chance to realize it, since I never even saw my passport.”
What are your thoughts on the baby name Ecaterina?
A few weeks ago, I got an email from a reader looking for lists of old-fashioned double names. She was aiming for names like Thelma Dean, Eula Mae, and Gaynell — names that would have sounded trendy in the early 1900s. She also mentioned that she’d started a list of her own.
So I began scouring the interwebs. I tracked down lists of old-fashioned names, and lists of double names…but I couldn’t find a decent list of double names that were also old-fashioned.
I loved the idea of such a list, though, so I suggested that we work together to create one. She generously sent me the pairings she’d collected so far, and I used several different records databases to find many more.
I restricted my search to names given to girls born in the U.S. from 1890 to 1930. I also stuck to double names that I found written as single names, because it’s very likely that these pairings were used together in real life (i.e., that they were true double names and not merely first-middle pairings).
Pairings that seemed too timeless, like Maria Mae and Julia Rose, were omitted. I also took out many of the pairings that feature now-trendy names — think Ella, Emma, and Lucy — because they just don’t sound old-fashioned anymore (though they would have a few decades ago).
The result isn’t exhaustive, but it’s a decent sampling of real-life, old-fashioned double names. I’ve organized them by second name, and I also added links to popularity graphs for names that were in the SSA data during the correct time period (early 1900s).
I spotted plenty of other combinations that just didn’t happen to be written as single names in the records, so here’s a handy dandy little table to cover some of the other existing combinations…
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