How popular is the baby name Sandra 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 Sandra.

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Popularity of the baby name Sandra


Posts that mention the name Sandra

The name Brunonia

From the cover of the book "The Lace Reader" (2006) by Brunonia Barry

I don’t remember when I first came across author Brunonia Barry, but I do remember being instantly curious about her name.

My first guess was botanical. Maybe “brunonia” was some sort of brown flower? (Do brown flowers even exist?) And I did find an Australian herb called brunonia. (Not brown-colored, but discovered by botanist Robert Brown.)

Turns out the Australian herb wasn’t the answer, but there was indeed a “brown” connection. Here’s how Brunonia Barry explains her name:

Brunonia is my middle name. I was named by my grandfather who was an overly enthusiastic alumnus of Brown University. Evidently Brown in Latin is Brunonia. He loved his alma mater so much that he named his summer house, his canoe, and his cat Brunonia. Then he decided that all of his grandchildren should take Brunonia as their middle names. […] My first name is really Sandra, but my pen name is Brunonia in honor of my grandfather.

So why did Brunonia Barry use her middle name as her pen name?

She chose to use her middle name as her professional name because of the strength it conveyed; her husband points out that there are several “Sandy Barry”s returned on a Google search, but only one “Brunonia Barry”!

What do you think of the name Brunonia?

P.S. Here’s an interesting NPR piece on how Brunonia self-published her book The Lace Reader.

Sources:

Image: Adapted from the cover of The Lace Reader

Popular baby names in Estonia, 2013

Flag of Estonia
Flag of Estonia

Estonia’s top baby names of 2013 were published in the newspaper Postimees at the end of 2012.

The paper didn’t explicitly mention the source of the information (the Ministry of the Interior?) but reported that the country’s most popular names from January to November, 2013, were Maria and Rasmus.

Here are Estonia’s projected top 15 girl names and top 15 boy names of 2013:

Girl Names

  1. Maria*
  2. Sofia
  3. Laura
  4. Anna*
  5. Mia/Miia
  6. Milana
  7. Lisandra
  8. Mirtel
  9. Viktoria
  10. Liisa
  11. Arina
  12. Darja
  13. Aleksandra
  14. Sandra
  15. Adeele/Adele

Boy Names

  1. Rasmus
  2. Artjom*
  3. Martin
  4. Robin
  5. Oliver
  6. Markus
  7. Nikita*
  8. Romet
  9. Sebastian
  10. Sander
  11. Kristofer
  12. Robert
  13. Oskar
  14. Maksim
  15. Daniel

(The names with asterisks (*) are particularly popular among Russian-speakers in Estonia.)

Names that increased in popularity last year include Rasmus, Gregor and Mia.

Kevin, Kristjan and Kristina, on the other hand, decreased in popularity “significantly.”

Mirtel, 8th on the girls’ list, was rare until Estonian actress Mirtel Pohla came along.

The name Lenna was similarly uncommon until Estonian singer Lenna Kuurmaa hit the scene, and now Lenna is “quite popular,” though not in the top 15.

Robin, 4th on the boys’ list, is a curious one. It’s not an Estonian name, but simply the English male name Robin. And yet it’s trending in Estonia right now. (The last time Robin was trendy in the U.S. was a half century ago, and most of those baby Robins were female.) Could the inspiration be “Blurred Lines” singer Robin Thicke? I know it’s a long shot, but that’s all I can think of.

Postimees also published the following list of Estonia’s most popular baby names from 1992 to 2004. (They did say the Ministry of the Interior was the source for this one.)

Top Girl Names, 1992–2004Top Boy Names, 1992–2004
1. Anna
2. Laura
3. Kristina
4. Maria
5. Diana
6. Sandra
7. Anastassia
8. Jekaterina
9. Karina
10. Alina
11. Kristiina
12. Aleksandra
13. Viktoria
14. Darja
15. Liis
16. Anastasia
17. Kätlin
18. Julia
19. Valeria		1. Martin
2. Sander
3. Aleksandr
4. Kristjan
5. Kevin
6. Nikita
7. Markus
8. Artur
9. Maksim
10. Karl
11. Dmitri
12. Daniil
13. Siim
14. Rasmus
15. Aleksei
16. Andrei
17. Artjom
18. Mihkel
19. Ilja

I’m guessing 2004 was picked as an endpoint because Estonia enacted a name law in early 2005 that regulates baby name orthography (to start weeding out foreign letters such as x, y and c). The full list has 677 names; at the bottom are names like Sirje, Raina, Raneli and Patricia.

Sources: And This Year’s Most Popular Baby Names Are…, These are the days of Rasmus, Artjom, Maria and Sofia

Image: Adapted from Flag of Estonia (public domain)

Baby born during Hurricane Sandy, named Sandra

hurricane

Inevitably, at least one baby out there has been named after superstorm Sandy.

Fernando Dimas Martinez and Anahi Sanchez Moreno of Brooklyn welcomed a baby girl a few hours before the storm hit.

Martinez had been considering “Jacqueline,” but after hearing nonstop storm reports at the restaurant where he works, he opted for a name reflecting current events.

The baby’s full name is Sandra Sanchez, nickname Sandy.

UPDATE, 11/2013: Just found the story of another New York baby named for Sandy: Adrian Storm Kusek, born on Oct. 29, son of Kinga and Pawel Kusek.

Source: Borough Park couple’s baby named after superstorm Sandy

Image: Adapted from Hurricane Elena by NASA (public domain)

Barbara Gale: The first hurricane-inspired baby name?

hurricane

In 1950, the United States Weather Bureau started naming Atlantic hurricanes and tropical storms.

The initial names came from a radio alphabet that began Able, Baker, Charlie, Dog, Easy, Fox and George. Because the alphabet happened to include several human names, you could say the first Atlantic storms that were “named” were the Charlies and Georges of 1950-1952.

It wasn’t until three years later that the USWB starting using human names exclusively. In 1953, it replaced the phonetic alphabet with a list of female names. (Male names weren’t thrown into the mix until 1979.)

The first storm with a female name was Tropical Storm Alice — the first storm of the 1953 storm season. I couldn’t find any babies named after Alice, but I did find one named after the second storm, Hurricane Barbara.

Hurricane Barbara traveled up the Eastern seaboard in mid-August. It struck the Outer Banks (islands off the North Carolina coast) on August 13. That night, a baby girl born in New Bern, N.C., to Mr. and Mrs. N. E. Ward was named Barbara Gale.

There were six other named storms (Carol, Dolly, Edna, Florence, Gail and Hazel) that season, but I could only find a namesake for one of them — Florence.

Hurricane Florence struck the Florida panhandle on September 26. Earlier that day, a baby born in Crestview, Florida, to Mr. and Mrs. Curtis Holt was named Sandra Florence.

Since 1953, many more babies — hundreds, probably — have been named for Atlantic hurricanes. Hurricane-inspired baby names I’ve written about here include Hazel (1954), Alicia (1983), Elena (1985), Gloria (1985), Andrew (1992) and Isabel (2003).

P.S. One of the things that helped popularize the idea of naming hurricanes in the first place was George R. Stewart’s book Storm (1941), which also had an influence on the baby name Mariah.

Sources:

Image: Adapted from Hurricane Elena by NASA (public domain)