How popular is the baby name Taffy 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 Taffy.
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Today, Battlestar Galactica is a sci-fi media franchise. But the original TV series wasn’t terribly successful — it aired on ABC for a single season (September of 1978 to April of 1979) before being canceled.
Still, the initial show managed to have an impact on American baby names. Here are the names that Battlestar Galactica characters managed to influence in the late 1970s:
Adama — from Commander Adama (played by Lorne Greene of Bonanza fame). The name Adama debuted (for boys) in 1978.
Apollo — from Captain Apollo, the son of Commander Adama. The name Apollo saw a rise in usage in 1978, and then-peak usage in 1979. (That peak was eclipsed in 2002 after speed skater Apolo Ohno became famous.)
Athena and Maren — from the daughter of Commander Adama, Lieutenant Athena (played by Maren Jensen). The name Athena saw a spike in usage 1979, and Maren nearly tripled in usage the same year.
Cassiopeia — from the character Cassiopeia, who was a “socialator” (a.k.a. prostitute). The name Cassiopeia debuted in 1979.
Starbuck — from Lieutenant Starbuck. The name Starbuck was a one-hit wonder in 1979. Both the name of the Lieutanant and the name of the famous coffee chain were inspired by the Moby Dick character Starbuck.
Tigh — from Colonel Tigh (played by Terry Carter, whose stage name was inspired in part by the comic strip Terry & the Pirates). The name Tigh debuted in 1979, and the spelling Tighe saw peak usage the same year.
Taffy isn’t just a type of candy — it’s also a name, and it debuted in the U.S. baby name data in 1943:
1947: 12 baby girls named Taffy
1946: 6 baby girls named Taffy
1945: unlisted
1944: 5 baby girls named Taffy
1943: 6 baby girls named Taffy [debut]
1942: unlisted
1941: unlisted
Why?
Because of Taffy Tucker, a new character introduced in the Terry and the Pirates comic strip during 1942.
Titular character Terry Lee joined the military in 1942, and there he met new people, including Taffy Tucker, an Army nurse, and Flip Corkin, an Army flight instructor (who was also Taffy’s boyfriend).
Taffy Tucker was a “spunky, dedicated nurse, hardworking and tireless, cheerful and caring and always feminine.”
At one point in the storyline, Taffy was kidnapped by a Japanese agent. She was beaten and left for dead in the interior of China. Thankfully, she was eventually rescued by Terry and Flip.
It took cartoonist Milton Caniff about three months to create the character:
[He] spent several days just worrying about a name for Taffy. Since he visualized her as a pert, snub-nosed girl from Georgia, he wanted a name with a typically Old South sound. He finally settled on Guinevere Marianne Tucker, nicknamed Taffy because of her candy-colored hair. She had to be short, because she was scheduled to fall in love with Flip Corkin, who is short, and she had to be blond [sic] for contrast with Flip, who is dark.
Caniff had modeled Taffy after a photo of real-life WWII military nurse Bernice Taylor of Kansas.
What do you think of Taffy as a baby name?
P.S. The name Taffy got a slight boost around 1949 thanks to the film The Doctor and the Girl, in which the young Dr. Corday has a love interest named Evelyn “Taffy” Heldon who operates a taffy machine in a candy store.
P.P.S. Other Terry and the Pirates-inspired baby names include Normandie, Merrily, and Raven.
Harvey, Robert C. Meanwhile…: A Biography of Milton Caniff, Creator of Terry and the Pirates and Steve Canyon. Seattle: Fantagraphics Books, 2007.
Bainbridge, John. “Significant Sig and the Funnies: Milton Caniff.” Milton Caniff: Conversations. Ed. Robert C. Harvey. Jackson, MS: University Press of Mississippi, 2002.
The Edge of Night (1956-1984) was a television soap opera with heavy crime drama elements (e.g., courtroom scenes). It was based directly on the radio drama Perry Mason (1943-1955). In fact, the central character of EoN — a police officer/lawyer named Mike Karr — was played by actor John Larkin, who had been the voice of Perry during the last eight years of the radio show.
EoN was a popular soap, ranking anywhere from 2nd to 6th from its inception until the early 1970s. More importantly, though, several EoN characters/actors ended up influencing the U.S. baby name charts.
First we have Teal, which debuted in the data in 1957:
1962: 24 baby girls named Teal
1961: 35 baby girls named Teal
1960: 28 baby girls named Teal
1959: 21 baby girls named Teal
1958: 28 baby girls named Teal
1957: 14 baby girls named Teal [debut]
1956: unlisted
Teal was inspired by actress Teal Ames, who played Mike’s girlfriend/wife Sara Karr on the show from 1956 to 1961. When Teal decided to quit show business, the character was killed off Edge of Night in a car crash. “CBS received so many anxious and hysterical calls after this episode that actress Teal Ames had to go on the air the following day to assure her fans that she was still very much alive.”
(That said, another potential influence on the name was Japanese-American jazz singer Teal Joy — real name Elsie Itashiki — who put out an album and started appearing on TV in late 1957.)
Next is Laurieann, which debuted in 1959. (And, a year later, the similar name Laurieanne popped up.)
1964: 25 baby girls named Laurieann
1963: 39 baby girls named Laurieann
1962: 35 baby girls named Laurieann
1961: 23 baby girls named Laurieann
1960: 21 baby girls named Laurieann
1959: 5 baby girls named Laurieann [debut]
1958: unlisted
No doubt Laurieann and Laurieanne were given a nudge by Laurie, which was at peak popularity in the early ’60s (perhaps thanks to Piper Laurie). But the more direct influence was fictional Laurie Ann Karr, Mike and Sara’s only daughter, who was born in the storyline in September of 1959.
Ratings for EoN weren’t as good from the mid-1970s onward, but by then the show was becoming known for something entirely different: unusual character names. These included Taffy, Lobo, Morlock, Cookie, Gunther, Didi, Smiley, Raven, and Schuyler. (Raven and Sky were a couple, of course.) And several of these unusual names got a boost in real life, thanks to the show.
For instance, character Draper Scott was featured in the storyline from 1975 to 1981. The baby name Draper re-emerged in the SSA data in 1976 and saw peak usage in 1980:
1981: 40 baby boys named Draper
1980: 46 baby boys named Draper
1979: 39 baby boys named Draper
1978: 36 baby boys named Draper
1977: 35 baby boys named Draper
1976: 15 baby boys named Draper
1975: unlisted
And female character Winter Austin, who was on the show from 1978 to 1979, pushed the baby name Winter into the top 1,000 for the first time in the late ’70s:
1980: 140 baby girls named Winter
1979: 241 baby girls named Winter [rank: 705th]
1978: 137 baby girls named Winter [rank: 1,000th]
1977: 29 baby girls named Winter
Were you a regular viewer of The Edge of Night? Did you have any opinions on the character names?
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