Baby Name: Sally

People sat up and took notice in early 1897 when gold prospector William Dickey claimed that a mountain he’d seen in Alaska was the tallest mountain on the continent.

He decided to name the peak “Mount McKinley, after William McKinley of Ohio, who had been nominated for the Presidency” — the first piece of news his party had heard “on [their] way out of that wonderful wilderness.”

Dickey’s claim proved to be true — the highest point in North America is indeed the mountain’s south peak, which has a summit elevation of 20,310 feet and a base-to-summit vertical rise of around 18,000 feet (making it “a full mile taller than Mt. Everest”).

But the name he chose kicked off a controversy that persists to this day.

Why? Because the mountain already had a name. Several names, in fact. There were multiple indigenous groups in the region, and each called the peak something different:

The Koyukon called it Deenaalee, the Lower Tanana named it Deenaadheet or Deennadhee, the Dena’ina called it Dghelay Ka’a, and at least six other Native groups had their own names for it.

Denali — a version of the Koyukon Athabascan name Deenaalee, meaning “the high one” or “the tall one” — seems to have become the preferred name among settlers in the area.

And yet, even though…

• Hudson Stuck, co-leader of the first expedition to successfully climb the mountain in 1913, began his book The Ascent of Denali (1914) with a “plea for the restoration to the greatest mountain in North America of its immemorial native name,” and
• Charles Sheldon (1867-1928), the naturalist who came up with the idea of a conserving the Denali region as a national park, made “repeated pleas [to Congress] to return the mountain to its original name,”

…the U.S. officially adopted the name McKinley when President Woodrow Wilson signed the Mount McKinley National Park Act in early 1917.

The state of Alaska officially changed the name of the mountain to “Denali” in 1975, and the U.S. officially changed the name of the park to “Denali National Park and Preserve” in 1980. Despite ongoing efforts to restore the name Denali to the peak itself, though, the federal government continues to refer to it as Mount McKinley.

So…has the word Denali ever been used as a baby name?

It has, for both genders. Here’s the number of U.S. babies given the baby name Denali since the (latest) turn of the century:

• 2014: 55 baby girls and 20 baby boys named Denali
• 2013: 62 baby girls and 11 baby boys named Denali
• 2012: 48 baby girls and 21 baby boys named Denali
• 2011: 45 baby girls and 13 baby boys named Denali
• 2010: 42 baby girls and 20 baby boys named Denali
• 2009: 54 baby girls and 15 baby boys named Denali
• 2008: 55 baby girls and 22 baby boys named Denali
• 2007: 43 baby girls and 26 baby boys named Denali
• 2006: 57 baby girls and 31 baby boys named Denali
• 2005: 51 baby girls and 41 baby boys named Denali
• 2004: 56 baby girls and 31 baby boys named Denali
• 2003: 46 baby girls and 33 baby boys named Denali
• 2002: 50 baby girls and 29 baby boys named Denali
• 2001: 44 baby girls and 17 baby boys named Denali
• 2000: 40 baby girls and 8 baby boys named Denali

The gender breakdown for these particular years is 69% female, 31% male.

Though I’ve found a few isolated cases of people in the U.S. named Denali in the 1800s and early 1900s, usage of the name didn’t pick up steam until the end of the 1900s. Denali started appearing regularly in the SSA’s baby name data as a girl name in the late 1980s, and as a boy name in the late 1990s.

Appropriately, the name Denali first became trendy in Alaska. In fact, it’s one of Alaska’s most distinctive baby names…though I think this may soon change, as usage in other states (especially California and Texas) has been inching upward lately.

What do you think of the baby name Denali?

Update, Sept. 2015: The mountain was officially renamed Denali by U.S. Interior Secretary Sally Jewell on August 30.

Sources:

• Dickey, William A. “Discoveries in Alaska.” New York Sun 24 Jan. 1897: 6.
• Geology of Denali National Park and Preserve – USGS
• Zimmermann, Kim Ann. “Denali (Mount McKinley): Facts About North America’s Tallest Mountain.” Live Science 15 May 2017.
• Denali National Park & Preserve (U.S. National Park Service)
• Denali National Park – PBS
• “Old Name Officially Returns to Nation’s Highest Peak.” U.S. Geological Survey 1 Sept. 2015.
• S 319 – 6.10.15 – U.S. Department of the Interior

Image: Adapted from Denali Mt McKinley (public domain)