Actress Myrna Loy began appearing on the big screen in the mid-1920s. Despite being a redhead from small-town Montana, she played vamps and “exotic” women in most of her early movies.
Her first starring role came in late 1927, in the silent film The Girl from Chicago. The following year, she starred in several more movies.
Around the same time, the usage of the baby name Myrna started to rise:
- 1929: 429 baby girls named Myrna [rank: 317th]
- 1928: 335 baby girls named Myrna [rank: 373rd]
- 1927: 203 baby girls named Myrna [rank: 490th]
- 1926: 157 baby girls named Myrna [rank: 569th]
- 1925: 136 baby girls named Myrna [rank: 629th]
Loy had appeared in “eighty-odd pictures” by the time The Thin Man — the film that finally turned her into a star — came out in May of 1934. Based on the novel of the same name by Dashiell Hammett, The Thin Man was so successful that it spawned five sequels — all starring Loy (along with co-star William Powell).
And as Loy’s fame grew during the latter half of the 1930s, the rise of the name Myrna accelerated:
- 1939: 1,600 baby girls named Myrna [rank: 144th]
- 1938: 1,801 baby girls named Myrna [rank: 134th] (peak usage)
- 1937: 1,652 baby girls named Myrna [rank: 137th]
- 1936: 1,396 baby girls named Myrna [rank: 149th]
- 1935: 1,059 baby girls named Myrna [rank: 176th]
- 1934: 836 baby girls named Myrna [rank: 211th]
- 1933: 571 baby girls named Myrna [rank: 254th]
- 1932: 422 baby girls named Myrna [rank: 307th]
Here’s a visual:
So, how did the actress come to be named “Myrna”?
Here’s how she told the story in her 1987 autobiography:
One of my father’s duties was taking the cattle to market in Chicago, traveling in stock cars, sleeping in the caboose. I was on the way in 1905 when he happened to stop near Broken Bow, Nebraska, on the Burlington Railroad. It wasn’t a proper station, really, just a whistle-stop where you got water or fuel for the coal-burning engines. Sometimes they had classical names left by itinerant scholars, and this one was called “Myrna.” The expectant father decided then and there, if the child was a girl, that would be her name.
It took some convincing, though:
When I was born, on August 2nd, there were great battles between him and my mother and grandmother. The ladies wanted Annabel, a composite of my grandmothers’ names, but for once my father held out against the strong women of the family. (…) So they named me Myrna Adele Williams, because my father liked the sound of it.
When she signed with Warner Brothers in the mid-1920s, her surname was changed from Williams to Loy.
Like the names Morna and Murna, the name Myrna is an Anglicized form of the Irish name Muirne.
What are your thoughts on the name Myrna?
Sources:
- Myrna Loy – Wikipedia
- Kotsilibas-Davis, James, and Myrna Loy. Myrna Loy: Being and Becoming. New York: Knopf, 1987.
- SSA
Image: Adapted from Myrna Loy (public domain)
[Latest update: Sept. 2025]