How popular is the baby name Rossana 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 Rossana.

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Popularity of the baby name Rossana


Posts that mention the name Rossana

Where did the baby name Silvana come from in 1950?

Italian actress Silvana Mangano (1930-1989)
Silvana Mangano

The Italian name Silvana first appeared in the U.S. baby name data in 1950:

  • 1953: 13 baby girls named Silvana
  • 1951: 10 baby girls named Silvana
  • 1950: 5 baby girls named Silvana [debut]
  • 1949: unlisted
  • 1948: unlisted

The similar name Sylvana popped up the very next year.

What put them on the map?

Italian actress Silvana Mangano, who became famous internationally with the success of her 1949 film Riso Amaro. In the movie, she played a peasant rice worker in the Po Valley of Northern Italy.

The film was released as Bitter Rice in the U.S. in September of 1950. (The original title is a pun, as the Italian word riso can refer either to rice or to laughter.) Around the same time, various American newspapers were promoting the “lithe, sensuous 20-year-old” Silvana Mangano as “Italy’s Rita Hayworth.”

Several years later, she starred in the movie Ulysses with Kirk Douglas and fellow Italian actress Rossana Podestà.

What are your thoughts on the baby name Silvana?

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Where did the baby name Rossana come from in 1954?

Italian actress Rossana Podesta (1934-2013)
Rossana Podesta

The name Rossana — which looks Rosanna, but is actually the Italian form of Roxana — first appeared in the U.S. baby name data in the mid-1950s:

  • 1956: 43 baby girls named Rossana
  • 1955: 15 baby girls named Rossana
  • 1954: 10 baby girls named Rossana [debut]
  • 1953: unlisted
  • 1952: unlisted

What was the influence?

Italian actress Rossana Podestà (born Carla Dora Podestà), who first came to the attention of Americans in early 1954, when she was cast in the lead role of the upcoming epic Helen of Troy (1956).

The stars are Rossana Podesta as Helen and Jacques Sernas as Paris, both completely unknown. Rossana, who plays the most fabulous beauty in history, is a 20-year-old Italian cutie who likes strawberries floating in champagne, sandwiches for breakfast, and men who look her straight in the eye.

Rossana had recently finished filming the Italian movie Ulisse (1954), in which she played Nausicaa. It was released in U.S. theaters the following year as Ulysses.

While Helen of Troy was successful, it didn’t turn either Rossana Podestà or Jacques Sernas into instant Hollywood superstars. But the young French actress who played Helen’s slave Andraste — a then-unknown Brigitte Bardot — was about to become quite famous…

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