How popular is the baby name Qianna 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 Qianna.

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Popularity of the baby name Qianna


Posts that mention the name Qianna

Popular and unique baby names in Iowa, 2020

Flag of Iowa
Flag of Iowa

I’m a little late on this one, considering that we looked at the 2021 state-by-state baby name data last week, but better late than never. :)

According to the Iowa Department of Public Health, the most popular baby names in the state in 2020 were Olivia and Oliver.

Here are Iowa’s top 10 girl names and top 10 boy names of 2020:

Girl Names

  1. Olivia, 171 baby girls
  2. Charlotte, 141
  3. Evelyn, 137
  4. Emma, 119
  5. Ava, 116
  6. Amelia, 115
  7. Harper, 113
  8. Sophia, 106
  9. Hazel, 101
  10. Eleanor, 96

Boy Names

  1. Oliver, 208 baby boys
  2. Liam, 183
  3. Theodore, 169
  4. Henry, 163
  5. William, 156
  6. Noah, 127
  7. Owen, 126
  8. Wyatt, 119
  9. Jack, 117
  10. Maverick, 112

In the girls’ top 10, Sophia, Hazel, and Eleanor replaced Avery, Nora, and Violet.

In the boys’ top 10, Theodore and Wyatt replaced Lincoln and Jackson. (Notably, Theodore jumped from 12th in 2019 up to 3rd in 2020.)

Over 3,500 girl names and nearly 2,800 boy names were bestowed just once in Iowa in 2020. The state says that unique names are trendy — in fact, “some Iowa counties…regularly reach 100% uniqueness, meaning there are no babies given the same name in a single year.”

Here’s a selection of Iowa’s unique baby names from 2020:

Unique Girl NamesUnique Boy Names
Alula, Brindle, Clorrenty, Dilnaaz, Ellaydrea, Fidelity, Glariel, Hepperli, Imariana, Jacklington, Kissimee, Lalotai, Malofo, Nellatreen, Offranel, Peninnah, Qianna, Rufusline, Sunrae, Tenebris, Ugbaad, Vatsana, Winji, Xyphora, Yliemani, ZenleyAeio, Bazzi, Colique, Drummer, Ezzeldeen, Faltaous, Groseille, Htoo, Invictus, J-Heart, Kalikimaka, Luxender, Mlondani, Noakley, Owendan, Prexy, Qorvyn, Ramazani, Smoltz, Tuxley, Unison, Vaxston, Wirachai, Yolotli, Zantoro

Thoughts on some of the above…

  • Kissimee – close to Kissimmee, the name of both a city and a river in Florida.
  • Tenebris – a form of the Latin word tenebra, meaning “darkness, shadow, gloom.”
  • Groseille – French for “redcurrant.”
  • Htoo – Burmese for “gold.” (Almost 10,000 refugees from Myanmar live in Iowa.)
  • Kalikimaka – Hawaiian for “Christmas.”
  • Vaxston – given the fact that Covid-19 dominated the headlines in 2020, I can’t help but wonder if this one wasn’t influenced by the word vaccine. (A baby in the Philippines was named “Vaccine” in 2020, incidentally.)
  • Yolotli – Nahuatl for “heart.”

Finally, in 2019, the top two names in Iowa were Charlotte and Oliver.

Sources: Top Baby Names – Iowa Public Health Tracking Portal, Baby Names Uniqueness – Iowa Public Health Tracking Portal

Image: Adapted from Flag of Iowa (public domain)

Where did the baby name Qiana come from in the 1970s?

Qiana television commercial

The baby name Qiana, which was very trendy during the late 1970s, can be traced back to a silk-like nylon fabric called Qiana (pronounced kee-ah-nah).

DuPont developed the fabric over a period of “20 years at a cost of $75 million,” and, during that time, referred to it simply as “fiber Y.”

In 1968, DuPont finally put the fabric on the market under the name “Qiana.” The company told Time that Qiana’s exotic-sounding name was just “a computerized combination of random letters.” (In fact, DuPont had started with a computer-generated list of 6,500 five-letter non-words and, after a full year of research and testing, finally settled on “Qiana.”)

Qiana first appeared in the U.S. baby name data in 1970:

  • 1972: 9 baby girls named Qiana
  • 1971: 16 baby girls named Qiana
  • 1970: 6 baby girls named Qiana [debut]
  • 1969: unlisted
  • 1968: unlisted

It didn’t become trendy until the second half of the decade, though.

Why?

Disco!

Qiana was a popular fabric for disco clothing, especially faux-silk men’s shirts. According to one writer, “Qiana materialized disco…as flannel materialized grunge.”

Remember John Travolta as Tony Manero in Saturday Night Fever (1977)? The black shirt he wore beneath that iconic 3-piece white suit was made of Qiana.

So, as disco peaked, so did the usage of the fabric — along with the number of advertisements that mentioned the fabric, which is important. And as the usage of the fabric peaked, so did the usage of the name. In fact, “Qiana” was boosted into the girls’ top 1,000 in 1977 and stayed there for five consecutive years:

  • 1982: 96 baby girls named Qiana
  • 1981: 159 baby girls named Qiana [ranked 939th]
  • 1980: 209 baby girls named Qiana [ranked 789th]
  • 1979: 331 baby girls named Qiana [ranked 556th]
  • 1978: 370 baby girls named Qiana [ranked 509th]
  • 1977: 251 baby girls named Qiana [ranked 649th]
  • 1976: 115 baby girls named Qiana
  • 1975: 88 baby girls named Qiana
  • 1974: 50 baby girls named Qiana
  • 1973: 25 baby girls named Qiana

A number of spelling variants (including Quiana, Quianna, Qianna, Quiona, Quionna, Queana, Quiyana, and the one-hit wonders Qiuana and Qiona) also appeared in the data in the late ’70s and early ’80s.

What are your thoughts on the baby name Qiana? (Do you like it more or less than the homophone Kiana?)

Sources:

Image: Screenshot of TV commercial for Qiana