The main characters of the popular TV series Starsky & Hutch (1975-1979) were a pair of plainclothes police detectives based in Southern California. Neither one was actually from Southern California, though.
Dark-haired Dave Starsky (played by Paul Michael Glaser), who was intense and impetuous, was originally from Brooklyn, New York.
And light-haired Ken “Hutch” Hutchinson (played by David Soul), who was more laid-back and intellectual, was originally from Duluth, Minnesota.
The year the show started airing, both Starsky and Hutch emerged for the first time in the U.S. baby name data:
| Boys named Starsky | Boys named Hutch | |
| 1977 | 30 | 9 |
| 1976 | 45† | 12 |
| 1975 | 11* | 5* |
| 1974 | . | . |
| 1973 | . | . |
A year later, in 1976, the compound name Paulmichael debuted as well.
And, several decades after that, the movie Starsky & Hutch (2004) starring Ben Stiller and Owen Wilson gave the name Hutch (but not Starsky) another boost.
So, what do the surnames Starsky and Hutch mean?
I haven’t had any luck tracking down the etymology of the Polish surname Starski/Starsky, but Hutch can be traced back (via the the Middle English personal name Hucche) to the name Hugh, which was derived from a Germanic word meaning “heart, mind, spirit.”
If you were having a son, and you had to name him either Starsky or Hutch, which would it be?
Sources:
- Starsky & Hutch – Wikipedia
- Starsky and Hutch – IMDb
- Hanks, Patrick. (Ed.) Dictionary of American Family Names. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013.
- Hugh – Behind the Name
P.S. Starsky and Hutch cruised around in a red-and-white Ford Gran Torino nicknamed the “striped tomato.”