How popular is the baby name Oprah 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 Oprah.

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Popularity of the baby name Oprah


Posts that mention the name Oprah

Where did the baby name Giuliani come from in 2002?

New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani
Rudy Giuliani

On September 11, 2001, members of the Islamic terrorist group al-Qaeda carried out four coordinated terrorist attacks on U.S. soil. The attacks killed nearly 3,000 people, most of whom died with the collapse of the Twin Towers in New York City.

New York City mayor Rudolph “Rudy” Giuliani was lauded for his leadership in the aftermath of the attacks. He made a number of appearances on TV* and radio. Oprah Winfrey dubbed him “America’s Mayor.”

On the last day of 2001, Time magazine declared Giuliani “Person of the Year.” (That day was also Giuliani’s last day as mayor, incidentally). Time said:

With the President out of sight for most of that day, Giuliani became the voice of America. Every time he spoke, millions of people felt a little better. His words were full of grief and iron, inspiring New York to inspire the nation. “Tomorrow New York is going to be here,” he said. “And we’re going to rebuild, and we’re going to be stronger than we were before…I want the people of New York to be an example to the rest of the country, and the rest of the world, that terrorism can’t stop us.”

And in 2002, we see the name Giuliani appear for the very first time in the U.S. baby name data:

  • 2004: unlisted
  • 2003: unlisted
  • 2002: 6 baby boys named Giuliani [debut]
  • 2001: unlisted
  • 2000: unlisted

The Italian surname Giuliani was derived from the personal name Giuliano, the Italian equivalent of Julian.

Two other baby names that debuted around this time, Independence in 2001 and Patriot in 2002, were also likely given a boost by the events of 9/11.

*Later in September, Rudy Giuliani was featured in the Saturday Night Live “9/11 Tribute” (video) that memorably ended with this short exchange between Lorne Michaels and Giuliani: “Can we be funny?” “Why start now?”

P.S. Fr. Mychal Judge, the first official casualty of 9/11, also had an impact on baby names in the early 2000s.

Sources:

  • Hanks, Patrick. (Ed.) Dictionary of American Family Names. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.
  • Pooley, Eric. “Mayor of the World.” Time 31 Dec. 2001.
  • SSA

Image: Clipping from the cover of Time magazine (13 Dec. 2001)

What brought the baby name Stedman back in 1987?

Stedman Graham on "The Oprah Winfrey Show" (in 1989)
Stedman Graham on “The Oprah Winfrey Show“

According to Wikipedia, Stedman Graham is an “educator, author, businessman and speaker.” But, without Wikipedia’s help, how would you describe Stedman? That’s right: “Oprah’s boyfriend.”

Oprah began dating Stedman Graham in mid-1986, a few months before The Oprah Winfrey Show premiered. We’ve already seen how the name Oprah debuted in the U.S. baby name data that year, but did you know that the talk show gave the baby name Stedman a boost as well?

  • 1990: 38 baby boys named Stedman
  • 1989: 82 baby boys named Stedman (peak usage)
  • 1988: 29 baby boys named Stedman
  • 1987: 20 baby boys named Stedman
  • 1986: unlisted
  • 1985: unlisted

Not only did “Stedman” reappear in the data in 1987 after a 48-year absence, but, the following year, the name Steadman similarly re-emerged, and the names Stedmen, Stedmon and Stedmond all appeared for the very first time.

And what accounts for the Stedman spike of 1989?

In February of that year, Stedman appeared as a guest on The Oprah Winfrey Show for the first time. The episode was about “men who marry or date famous women, and how they cope with it.” The other guests were actress Susan Lucci and her husband Helmut, and singer Barbara Mandrell and her husband Ken.

While usage of the name Stedman has tapered off since 1989, the relationship between Oprah and Stedman is still going strong nearly 3 decades later. They attended the Oscars together last month, in fact.

Stedman is one several “significant other” baby names I’ve spotted in the SSA’s baby name data so far. Others include Josanne, Movita and Tarita (all associated with Marlon Brando), Syreeta and Londie (both associated with Stevie Wonder), Loray and Altovise (both associated with Sammy Davis, Jr.), one-hit wonder Kayatana (girlfriend of Flip Wilson), Marva (first wife of Joe Louis) and Sonji (first wife of Muhammad Ali). Stedman is unique, though, in that it’s a male name that was popularized by a famous female — not a common scenario, it seems.

Sources: Stedman Graham – Wikipedia, Oprah’s Beau Drops In Her Main Squeeze Meets Star’s Tv ‘Family’, SSA

Image: Screenshot of The Oprah Winfrey Show

How did Oprah Winfrey get her name?

Talk show host Oprah Winfrey
Oprah Winfrey

We all know who Oprah Winfrey is. But do you know how she got her name?

Here’s the story, as told by Oprah herself:

I was born, as I said, in rural Mississippi in 1954. I was born at home. There were not a lot of educated people around and my name had been chosen from the Bible. My Aunt Ida had chosen the name, but nobody really knew how to spell it, so it went down as “Orpah” on my birth certificate, but people didn’t know how to pronounce it, so they put the “P” before the “R” in every place else other than the birth certificate. On the birth certificate it is Orpah, but then it got translated to Oprah, so here we are.

I’m not sure if she ever legally changed her named to Oprah.

The biblical character Orpah is mentioned in the Book of Ruth. Many sources posit that Orpah’s name derives from a Hebrew word meaning the “nape of the neck” or the “back of the neck,” as Orpah turned her back on her mother-in-law, Naomi, when she decided to return to her family in Moab.

Oprah’s very popular Oprah Winfrey Show debuted in 1986. As you’d expect, that’s the same year the baby name Oprah appeared on the SSA’s list for the very first time:

  • 1988: 17 baby girls named Oprah
  • 1987: 37 baby girls named Oprah
  • 1986: 12 baby girls named Oprah [debut]
  • 1985: unlisted
  • 1984: unlisted

The name dropped off the list after 1990, but has managed to return twice — in 2006 and 2007.

P.S. Two more posts featuring Oprah-related names are Stedman and Canaan.

Sources: Oprah Winfrey Interview (1991), SSA

Image: Screenshot of The Oprah Winfrey Show

Where did the baby name Tessalee come from in 2007?

The book "Firefly Cloak" (2006) by Sheri Reynolds
The book “Firefly Cloak“

The compound name Tessalee is so rare that it has only appeared in the U.S. baby name data once, in 2007:

  • 2009: unlisted
  • 2008: unlisted
  • 2007: 6 baby girls named Tessalee [debut]
  • 2006: unlisted
  • 2005: unlisted

What put it there?

My best guess is the 2006 coming-of-age novel The Firefly Cloak by American author Sheri Reynolds. The book features a main character named Tessa Lee:

When 8-year old Tessa Lee and her brother, Travis, are abandoned in a campground by their desperate mother and her boyfriend of the moment, their mother leaves them only two things: a phone number printed in Magic Marker on Travis’s back and her favorite housecoat, printed with tiny fireflies, that she places over her sleeping children.

I’m not sure how well the novel sold, but one of Reynolds’ earlier novels, The Rapture of Canaan (1995), became an Oprah‘s Book Club selection in 1997, and consequently both a New York Times bestseller and a Publishers Weekly bestseller. So her later books certainly would have been on readers’ radars.

That said…the name Tessa also happened to see a boost in usage in 2007. In fact, that was the year Tessa saw peak usage overall. So whatever was influencing Tessa (actress Tessa Thompson perhaps?) may have been influencing Tessalee as well.

What do you think of the name Tessalee? Would you use it as a single name, or do you prefer “Tessa Lee” as a first/middle combo?

Sources: