The Irish name Oona first appeared in the U.S. baby name data in the 1940s:
- 1944: 5 baby girls named Oona
- 1943: 7 baby girls named Oona
- 1942: 5 baby girls named Oona [debut]
- 1941: unlisted
- 1940: unlisted
Why?
It was thanks to Oona O’Neill, daughter of Eugene and Agnes O’Neill, both writers. Oona was born in Bermuda in 1925, five years after her father won his first Pulitzer Prize.
In the early 1940s, Oona was a teenage socialite with famous friends. And in April of 1942, when the 16-year-old debutante was selected as the top “glamour girl” of New York society at the Stork Club, she became famous.
Oona got offers from film studios, and if she had gone in that direction, her name might have become more popular during the 1940s. Instead, she became the wife of Charlie Chaplin in June of 1943, when she was 18 and he was 54. Not long after that, her name dropped back off the charts.
(Oona and Charlie went on to have eight children, named: Geraldine, Michael, Josephine, Victoria, Eugene, Jane, Annette, and Christopher. Geraldine’s daughter Oona Chaplin played the part of Talisa Maegyr on Game of Thrones a few years ago.)
These days, the name Oona (which is actually a spelling variant of Úna) is relatively close to the U.S. top 1,000:
- 2017: 93 baby girls named Oona [rank: 2,085th]
- 2016: 111 baby girls named Oona [rank: 1,856th]
- 2015: 131 baby girls named Oona [rank: 1,634th]
- 2014: 63 baby girls named Oona [rank: 2,761st]
- 2013: 38 baby girls named Oona [rank: 3,977th]
Do you think it will ever get there?
What are your thoughts on the baby name Oona?
P.S. “Oona” was back in the baby name data in 1954, the year a character named Oona could be seen on the big screen in the movie Taza, Son of Cochise.
P.P.S. I also mentioned Charlie Chaplin in this post about the name Cherrill.
Source: Oona O’Neill – Wikipedia
Image: from a Woodbury soap advertisement in Life magazine (March 8, 1943)