How popular is the baby name Picabo 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 Picabo.

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Popularity of the baby name Picabo


Posts that mention the name Picabo

Interesting one-hit wonder names in the U.S. baby name data

single flower

They came, they went, and they never came back!

These baby names are one-hit wonders in the U.S. baby name data. That is, they’ve only popped up once, ever, in the entire dataset of U.S. baby names (which accounts for all names given to at least 5 U.S. babies per year since 1880).

There are thousands of one-hit wonders in the dataset, but the names below have interesting stories behind their single appearance, so these are the one-hits I’m writing specific posts about. Just click on a name to read more.

2020s

  • (none yet)

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1990s

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1950s

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1910s

1900s

  • (none yet)

1890s

As I discover (and write about) more one-hit wonders in the data, I’ll add the names/links to this page. In the meanwhile, do you have any favorite one-hit wonder baby names?

Image: Adapted from Solitary Poppy by Andy Beecroft under CC BY-SA 2.0.

[Latest update: Dec. 2023]

Is not naming a baby “emotionally harmful”?

Days ago, a UK judge ruled that a 5-month-old boy should be taken away from his parents in part because he had no first name:

“His father has refused to give him a name,” said Mrs Justice Parker in her ruling.

“I think ideally the mother independently would not have taken that view.”

The judge said the boy was starting to acquire language, and added: “Every child needs a name.”

She went on: “I truly think that it is emotionally harmful not to give a child a name.”

A century ago, it was common for parents to wait weeks, months, sometimes years before naming a baby. A handful of people (like Tifft and Gatewood) went their entire lives without a given name.

While most parents today name their babies soon after birth, some still choose to wait. Ben Harper and Laura Dern didn’t name their daughter Jaya until she was 3 months old. Picabo Street’s name wasn’t official until she was 3.

Do you agree or disagree with Mrs Justice Parker that it is “emotionally harmful not to give a child a name”? If your answer depends upon the age of the child, at what age do you think namelessness become dangerous?

P.S. “Mrs Justice” is the judge’s title. I couldn’t track down her given name.

Source: Child with no name must be adopted, judge rules (found via Twitter, thanks to Anna of Waltzing More Than Matilda)

Where did the baby name Picabo come from in 1998?

In 1998, the baby name Picabo appeared in the U.S. baby name data for the first and (so far) only time:

  • 2000: unlisted
  • 1999: unlisted
  • 1998: 5 baby girls named Picabo [debut]
  • 1997: unlisted
  • 1996: unlisted

Why?

Because that’s the year U.S. skier Picabo Street won a gold medal at the Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan.

(I also found a handful of babies named Picabo in 1994 — the year Street won a silver medal at the Winter Olympics in Lillehammer, Norway.)

How did Picabo get her name? Here’s what ESPN says:

Picabo Street was born at home, the second of two children in Triumph, Idaho, on April 3, 1971 to two counterculture parents, Stubby and Dee Street, who initially named their daughter “Baby Girl.” Three years later, when Stubby, a stonesman by trade, took his family with him to Central America working a variety of odd jobs, she was re-named Picabo after a nearby Idaho town. (The word means “shining waters” in the language of Sho-Ban, a Native American tribe that once inhabited the region.)

[“Sho-Ban” = Shoshone-Bannock]

Here’s how Picabo told the story in an interview from the mid-1990s:

Well, what happens is I think my mother called me Picabo ever since I was a little tiny baby. And on my birth certificate it says Baby Girl. The original plan was for my parents to let my brother and I name ourselves. I turned 3, he turned 5, we went to get passports to travel to Mexico, and they were like, “No, Baby Girl’s not gonna work, folks.” So, my mom wanted the name Picabo, but my dad did not want to spell it like the game, because he figured, you know we’ll be bailing her out of the principal’s office way too often if we give her that name. So there’s a town down south of where I live, about 20 miles south, called Picabo, spelled the way I spell my name. And you know I think the Indians settled there way back and there’s a world famous trout fishing stream that goes through there called Silver Creek, and it’s very wide and placid, and the Indians are simple, sun hits it, “shining waters.”

At the age of 4, she was given the option to change her name. She opted to stick with Picabo.

Was it easy to growing up with the name Picabo?

“A lot of people made so much fun of my name, so much. They said some of the meanest things, cause you know you can add Peek-a-dot, dot, dot. You fill in the blank,” she remembered. “You can pretty much add anything you want in there and I heard it all”… Street said once she got a little older and put on a little more weight, “I was fighting and yelling at people all the time for making fun of my name, or what I did…but having a name that nobody else had — I liked that.”

What do you think of the name Picabo?

Sources: Five things you may not know about Picabo Street, Interview with Downhill Skier Picabo Street, Injuries haven’t stopped greatest U.S. skier, Nagano Olympics – Athlete profile: Picabo Street, SSA