How popular is the baby name Therese 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 Therese.

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Popularity of the baby name Therese


Posts that mention the name Therese

Where did the baby name Lux come from in 2001?

The character Lux Lisbon from the movie "The Virgin Suicides" (1999)
Lux Lisbon from “The Virgin Suicides“

The modern name Lux debuted in the U.S. baby name data during the first year of the 21st century:

  • 2003: 14 baby girls named Lux
  • 2002: 16 baby girls named Lux
  • 2001: 9 baby girls and 5 baby boys named Lux [dual-gender debut]
  • 2000: unlisted
  • 1999: unlisted

Why were expectant parents seeing the Latin word for “light” as a viable baby name around that time?

Likely because of the character Lux Lisbon (played by actress Kirsten Dunst) from the movie The Virgin Suicides (1999), which wasn’t given a wide theatrical release until May of 2000.

Set in a suburb of Detroit in the mid-1970s, The Virgin Suicides followed the five beautiful Lisbon sisters: Therese, Mary, Bonnie, Lux, and Cecilia. They were the teenage daughters of strict Catholic parents, and therefore off-limits to the neighborhood boys “who loved and lusted after” them (and from whose collective perspective the story was told).

Lux Lisbon — the “most perfect” of the sisters — was the only one to lose her virginity (to high school heartthrob Trip Fontaine, played by actor Josh Hartnett) during her short life.

The film was based on the 1993 novel of the same name by Jeffrey Eugenides.

What are your thoughts on the name Lux? Do you think it works better as a girl name or as a boy name?

Sources: The Virgin Suicides (film) – Wikipedia, The Virgin Suicides review – Roger Ebert, SSA

Image: Screenshot of The Virgin Suicides

Minnesota family with 22 children

kinderfest

In the mid-20th century, Alvin Joseph Miller and Lucille Rose Miller (née Kahnke) of Waseca, Minnesota, had 22 children — 15 girls and 7 boys.

Here are the names of all 22 siblings:

  1. Ramona Mary (born in 1940), who became a Franciscan nun
  2. Alvin Joseph, Jr. (b. 1942)
  3. Rose Ann (b. 1943)
  4. Kathleen Edith (b. 1945)
  5. Robert Vincent (b. 1946)
  6. Patricia Jean (b. 1947)
  7. Mary Lucille (b. 1948), nicknamed “Marylu”
  8. Diane Margaret (b. 1949)
  9. John Charles (b. 1950)
  10. Janet Irene (b. 1951)
  11. Linda Louise (b. 1953)
  12. Virginia Therese (b. 1954)
  13. Helen Rita (b. 1955), who wrote a book about growing up in a large family
  14. Arthur Lawrence (b. 1956)
  15. Dolores Maria (b. 1957)
  16. Martin Peter (b. 1959)
  17. Pauline Carmel (b. 1960)
  18. Alice Callista (b. 1961)
  19. Angela Mary (b. 1962)
  20. Marcia Marie (b. 1963)
  21. Gregory Eugene (b. 1964)
  22. Damien Francis (b. 1966)

Eight of the children had been born by April of 1950, when the Miller family was interviewed for the U.S. Census:

The Miller family on the 1950 U.S. Census
The Miller family (1950 U.S. Census)

Alvin and Lucille raised their children on a 300-acre farm that included a seven-bedroom farmhouse. Here’s how Diane (#8) described her childhood:

I remember a lot of rides in the wheelbarrow from the granary to the barn. I remember a lot of grinding feed, a lot of egg washing and packing, a lot of sitting by the wood stove in the basement, singing songs as we candled eggs.

Which of the names above do you like most?

P.S. Thank you to Destiny for letting me know about the Miller family a few months ago! (Destiny also told me about the Jones family of West Virginia.)

Sources:

Image: Ein Kinderfest (1868) by Ludwig Knaus

What popularized the baby name Celine in the 1990s?

Céline Dion's first English-language album, "Unison" (1990)
Céline Dion album

According to the U.S. baby name data, the name Celine saw a steep rise in the usage during the 1990s:

  • 1999: 394 baby girls named Celine [rank: 617th]
  • 1998: 565 baby girls named Celine [rank: 456th]
  • 1997: 443 baby girls named Celine [rank: 537th]
  • 1996: 271 baby girls named Celine [rank: 774th]
  • 1995: 231 baby girls named Celine [rank: 846th]
  • 1994: 247 baby girls named Celine [rank: 815th]
  • 1993: 157 baby girls named Celine
  • 1992: 121 baby girls named Celine
  • 1991: 77 baby girls named Celine
  • 1990: 52 baby girls named Celine
  • 1989: 43 baby girls named Celine

The name entered the top 1,000 in 1994, and even reached the top 500 (briefly) in 1998. That 1998 spike remained the name’s highest overall usage until the late 2010s.

Here’s a visual:

Graph of the usage of the baby name Celine in the U.S. since 1880
Usage of the baby name Celine

What was behind the rise?

Quebec-born singer Céline Dion, who became one of the dominant pop divas of the mid-to-late 1990s (along with Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey).

She’d been putting out French-language music in Canada for a decade before finally releasing her first English-language album, Unison, in 1990. The album featured the song “Where Does My Heart Beat Now,” which reached #4 on Billboard‘s Hot 100 chart in March of 1991.

This first English-language hit was followed by many more, including…

  • “Beauty and the Beast” (1991), a duet with Peabo Bryson
    • theme song from the 1991 Disney movie Beauty and the Beast
  • “If You Asked Me To” (1992)
  • “The Power of Love” (1993)
  • “Because You Loved Me” (1996)
    • theme song from the 1996 movie Up Close & Personal
  • “It’s All Coming Back to Me Now” (1996)
  • “All by Myself” (1996)
  • “My Heart Will Go On” (1997)
    • theme song from the 1997 movie Titanic

“My Heart Will Go On” was Céline Dion’s biggest hit, and today it’s considered her signature song. Here’s a live performance:

The 5-time Grammy winner was born in March of 1968 in the town of Charlemagne, a suburb of Montreal. Her parents, Adhémar and Thérèse Dion, had a total of fourteen children:

  1. Denise
  2. Clément
  3. Claudette
  4. Liette
  5. Michel
  6. Louise
  7. Jacques
  8. Daniel
  9. Ghislaine
  10. Linda
  11. Manon
  12. Paul (twin)
  13. Pauline (twin)
  14. Céline

Céline, the baby of the family, was more than two decades younger than her oldest sibling, Denise.

How did she come to be named Céline?

Her mother had chosen the name after hearing the song “Céline,” written by the French writer and singer-songwriter Hugues Aufray, who had had great success in Quebec and France during the time Céline’s mother was pregnant with her. “Céline” told the story of a good-hearted, well-behaved girl, the oldest of a large family, whose mother died giving birth to the youngest. The Céline of the song sacrificed her youth to care for her brothers and sisters, and the years had passed without her ever knowing the joys of love.

Hugues Aufray’s song “Céline” [vid] was released in 1966.

Quebec’s baby name data, which only goes back to 1980, doesn’t reveal whether or not the song made the name Céline trendy in Quebec in the late 1960s. But it does show the name declining in usage during the 1980s — despite the fact that a teenage Céline Dion was racking up French-language hits in Quebec throughout the decade.

The French name Céline can be traced back (via the Roman family names Caelinus and Caelius) to the Latin word caelum, which means “heaven.”

What are your thoughts on the name Céline?

Sources:

What gave the baby name Eilish a boost in the 1990s?

Katie and Eilish Holton, conjoined twins born in Ireland in 1988.
Katie and Eilish Holton

Once the SSA releases the 2019 baby name data, we’ll know just how high the name Eilish — an anglicized form of Eilís, the Irish Gaelic form of Elizabeth or Alice — climbed during Billie Eilish’s breakout year.

While we wait, though, we can go back in time to learn why the Irish name Eilish saw its strongest usage in the U.S. in the mid-1990s.

The year Eilish debuted in the data, 1977, it was given to a mere five babies. The year it reappeared, 1993, it was given to nearly two dozen babies. (The same year, we see the reappearance of Ailish and the debut of one-hit wonder Ilish.) And when Eilish peaked in usage three years later, the number had climbed to nearly three dozen.

  • 1997: 27 baby girls named Eilish
  • 1996: 35 baby girls named Eilish [peak]
  • 1995: 17 baby girls named Eilish
  • 1994: 14 baby girls named Eilish
  • 1993: 23 baby girls named Eilish [return]
  • 1992: unlisted
  • 1991: unlisted

So what brought Eilish back?

Eilish Holton, a conjoined twin who (along with her sister Katie) was born in County Kildare, Ireland, in August of 1988. The pair were “joined from shoulder to hip, with four arms and two shared legs. Each had her own heart and spinal column but shared one pelvis, one large bowel, one bladder and one kidney.” Eilish was on the right-hand side, Katie on the left-hand side.

The girls came to the attention of Americans thanks to the British TV documentary Katie and Eilish (1992), which aired in the U.S. in May of 1993.

Title of the TV documentary "Katie and Eilish" (1992)
“Katie and Eilish“

The Peabody Award-winning documentary followed the 3-year-old twins over the twelve months leading up to their 15-hour separation surgery, which took place in London in April of 1992. The film concluded after the operation had taken place and Katie had passed away (due to heart failure, just days after the separation) leaving Eilish as the sole surviving twin.

The documentary’s follow-up, Eilish: Life Without Katie (1995), which aired in the U.S. in July of 1996, is what pushed the name to peak usage three years later.

The second film followed 6-year-old Eilish, who was now getting around with the help of a prosthetic leg (dubbed “Katie,” poignantly). Unlike the first film, though, this one wasn’t well-received by reviewers; one person described it as “maddeningly unchallenging, uninformative and undemanding.”

What are your thoughts on the baby name Eilish? Would you use it?

Sources: Katie and Eilish – ITV Studios, The Most Intimate Bond – Time, Such Sweetened Sorrow – The Independent, Life after Katie – Independent.ie, Eilish – Behind the Name

P.S. Eilish Holton’s four other sisters are named Claire, Therese, Mairead, and Maeve.