How popular is the baby name Richard 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 Richard.

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Popularity of the baby name Richard


Posts that mention the name Richard

Where did the baby name Janssen come from in 1964?

Actor David Janssen as Dr. Richard Kimble in the TV series "The Fugitive" (1963-1967).
David Janssen in “The Fugitive“

The surname-name Janssen first appeared on the baby name charts in 1964:

  • 1968: unlisted
  • 1967: 5 baby boys named Janssen
  • 1966: unlisted
  • 1965: 8 baby boys named Janssen
  • 1964: 16 baby boys named Janssen [debut]
  • 1963: unlisted
  • 1962: unlisted

It wasn’t a particularly impressive debut, but 16 baby boys was enough to make Janssen one of the top debut names of the year.

What was the influence here?

Actor David Janssen, who played Dr. Richard Kimble in the memorable TV drama The Fugitive from 1963 to 1967. Dr. Kimble, falsely convicted of murdering his wife Helen, escaped from authorities on the way to death row and spent the rest of the series both evading recapture and searching for the real killer, the mysterious “one-armed man.”

Notably, 72% of the television sets in America tuned in to see the show’s final episode, in which Dr. Kimble finally finds the justice he’s been seeking.

(The name Kimble also saw slightly higher usage while the show was on the air.)

Do you like the name Janssen?

Sources: The Fugitive (TV series) – Wikipedia, Tuesday, August 29, 1967: The Day The Running Stopped for “The Fugitive’s” Richard Kimble

Babies named for famous kings

king solomon image

A few months ago, I got an email from a reader who’d spotted an obituary for a man named “King David.” Even more intriguing, King David’s father’s name was “King Solomon.” The reader wondered what other famous kings had inspired similar first/middle name combinations.

Historical records reveal that, long before the name King became trendy in the 2000s, hundreds (perhaps thousands?) of people in America were given the first name “King.”

While most that I saw had middle names that didn’t create a special pairing (e.g., King Clyde, King Terry), a good number did have middle names that — whether intentionally or not — turned the pairing into the name of some historical, biblical, or legendary king.

Here are some of the pairings I spotted, plus links to a few examples:

King Alfred
King Arthur
King Asa
King Charles
King Edward
King Frederick
King George
King Henry		King Hezekiah
King James
King Josiah
King Louis
King Olaf
King Oscar
King Richard
King Saul

Several of these (Kingarthur, Kingcharles, Kingdavid, Kingjames, Kingjosiah, and Kingsolomon) also appear as compound names in the SSA data.

Do like the recent King-as-a-first-name trend? Why or why not?

How did “The Brighter Day” influence baby names?

brighter day, soap opera, 1950s, television
Babby, Grayling, and Patsy in 1954

The Brighter Day was a moderately popular soap opera that ran on radio from 1948 to 1956 and on television from 1954 to 1962.

The show featured the Dennis family, which was headed by widowed father Rev. Richard Dennis. His five children were adult daughters Elizabeth (Liz) and Althea, adult son Grayling, and teenage daughters Patricia (Patsy) and Barbara (Babby).

At least four Brighter Day characters influenced U.S. baby names:

Grayling

In a 1949 article, Grayling Dennis was described as “restless, charming, spoiled. He writes poetry, plays the violin, has a long string of girl friends who adore his flashing eyes and his wonderful tennis, and drinks too much. But none of these activities has helped Gray, at twenty-three, to “find himself.””

The show was radio-only at that time — listeners would hear Grayling’s name, but never see it — so it’s not surprising that a slew of spelling variants ended up as boy names in the baby name data.

The first of the group to debut was Graylin, in 1949. Grayling, Grayland, and Graylon appeared in 1950, followed by Graylan (’54), Graylyn (’55), Graylen (’56), and Greyling (’57).

GraylinGraylingGraylandGraylon
19601436109
19592761 [rank: 987th]1115
19582855186
19572858 [rank: 997th]1516
195625471912
19551638158
1954824146
1953111167
195288.6
195178.8
19501117*5*5*
19496*...
1948....
*Debut

The name Grayling reached the top 1000 twice in the late ’50s, but all variants saw decreased usage after the TV show was canceled in the early ’60s.

Althea

Dramatic daughter Althea dramatically boosted the usage of the name Althea in the late 1940s:

  • 1951: 334 baby girls named Althea (rank: 454th)
  • 1950: 309 baby girls named Althea (rank: 462nd)
  • 1949: 235 baby girls named Althea (rank: 545th)
  • 1948: 126 baby girls named Althea (rank: 761st)
  • 1947: 118 baby girls named Althea (rank: 803rd)

No doubt she was also behind the debut of the spelling Altheia in 1951.

Spring

In early 1951, Althea discovered she was pregnant. Althea was eager to become an movie actress, not a mother, and “regard[ed] the baby as an annoying interruption to her ambitions.” Regardless, she soon gave birth to a baby girl named Spring, and the baby name Spring debuted in the U.S. data the very same year:

  • 1959: 34 baby girls named Spring
  • 1958: 44 baby girls named Spring
  • 1957: 77 baby girls named Spring
  • 1956: 104 baby girls named Spring
  • 1955: 41 baby girls named Spring
  • 1954: 37 baby girls named Spring
  • 1953: 27 baby girls named Spring
  • 1952: 30 baby girls named Spring
  • 1951: 7 baby girls named Spring [debut]
  • 1950: unlisted

By July of 1952, Althea’s daughter Spring was already 4 years old (a victim of Soap Opera Rapid Aging Syndrome). I’m not sure how often Spring appeared in the show overall, but she may have been featured prominently in 1956, judging by the usage of the baby name that year.

Babby

In a 1954 article, Babby Dennis was described as “eager and impulsive.” She was the baby of the family, and her nickname was consistently spelled with a “y” to reflect this fact.

But TV audiences clearly preferred the spelling Babbie, which debuted in 1956 — years before Babby and Babbi finally showed up:

Girls named BabbieGirls named BabbyGirls named Babbi
1963...
196285.
1961189.
196020156
1959195*6*
19588..
19588..
19575..
195610*..
1955...
*Debut

By 1959, Babby was a young adult and involved in a romance with a gangster named Peter Nino. (Despite being a gangster, Nino was popular with TV audiences: “Nino was to be killed off in six months, but fan mail gave him a reprieve.”)

Sources:

P.S. Three of the sources above refer to a single magazine that went through a bunch of name changes over the course of its existence (1930s to 1970s). The publisher was Macfadden, founded by Bernarr Macfadden, who knew a bit about name changes himself…

Name change: Polly Peabody to Caresse Crosby

Caress & Clytoris

Here’s an interesting name-evolution story.

Mary “Polly” Phelps Jacob was born in 1891 in New York to a blue-blooded family that could be traced back, on both sides, to colonial America.

She was an enterprising person, and in her early 20s — fed up with the corset-like undergarments of the era — she invented and patented a “backless brassiere.” (She constructed the first one out of handkerchiefs and pink ribbon.) Today, she’s credited with the invention the modern bra.

With her first marriage in 1915 to Richard Peabody, her name changed to the almost cartoonish Polly Peabody. (One of their two kids, legally named Polleen, also went by Polly.)

But that marriage didn’t last and, following the divorce in 1922, Polly married bon vivant Harry Crosby, with whom she’d been having an open affair. At first she went by Polly Crosby, but Harry declared that Polly needed a better name:

Clytoris, an early suggestion, was sensibly saved for the family’s second whippet (the first was named Narcisse Noir). They told Caresse’s daughter Polleen that she was named after a Greek goddess.

After deciding upon “Caresse,” the wealthy couple moved to Paris and “lived a theatrically mad, bad and Bohemian existence.” With the help of their small publishing house, Black Sun Press, they became close to many Lost Generation artists and writers, including Ernest Hemingway.

Harry committed suicide two months after the stock market crash of 1929 (which kicked off the Great Depression). Caresse’s life post-Harry was slightly less colorful, and she used name “Mary Caresse Crosby” slightly more often, but was still primarily known as Caresse.

Sources: Polly Peabody, The Bohemian Blueblood Who Invented the Bra, Mary Phelps Jacob (Caresse Crosby), The Crosbys: literature’s most scandalous couple

P.S. Did you know that the name Caresse started appearing in the U.S. baby name data back in 1949?

P.P.S. Just discovered (June 2020) that Drunk History has a Mary Phelps Jacob episode.