How popular is the baby name Tony 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 Tony.

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Popularity of the baby name Tony


Posts that mention the name Tony

Where did the baby name Mayim come from in 1993?

The character Blossom (played by Mayim Bialik) from the TV series "Blossom" (1991-1995).
Mayim Bialik (as Blossom)

The rare name Mayim first appeared in the U.S. baby name data in 1993:

  • 1995: unlisted
  • 1994: unlisted
  • 1993: 8 baby girls named Mayim [debut]
  • 1992: unlisted
  • 1991: unlisted

Where did it come from?

Young actress Mayim Bialik (pronounced MY-im bee-AH-lik).

She played the part of smart, spunky teenager Blossom Russo on the TV series Blossom (1991-1995).

Blossom was the only girl in the house: She lived with her father, a divorced session musician, and her two older brothers, Tony and Joey. She also spent a lot of time with her fast-talking best friend, Six LeMeure.

The plot lines mostly revolve around [Blossom’s] battles with school authorities, her trials of romance, the temptations of marijuana, alcohol and sex, wrecking her father’s car or having to sneak back into the house after staying out all night.

The sitcom wasn’t successful right away. By the third season (1992-1993), though, Blossom had blossomed into a hit. So it’s not surprising that the name Mayim didn’t debut in the data until midway through the show’s run.

Mayim Bialik’s first name is a Hebrew vocabulary word defined by some sources as “waters” (plural), though the actress herself prefers to define it as “water” (singular):

I was named for water. Mayim means water in Hebrew and it has followed me my entire life as a personal metaphor. Water is the element closest to my heart.

The word mayim is not typically used as a given name among Hebrew speakers. So how did Bialik come to have it?

Turns out it was bestowed in honor of her grandmother, Maryam, who was known as “Bubbe Mayim” within the family. (Bubbe means “grandmother” in Yiddish.)

What are your thoughts on the name Mayim?

P.S. The name Blossom also saw a modest increase in usage in the early 1990s, particularly 1991.

Sources:

Baby name story: Ozana

Ozana Halik, son of Polish filmmaker Tony Halik (1921-1998)
Ozana Halik

Polish filmmaker Mieczyslaw “Tony” Halik is best remembered for his travel show Pieprz i Wanilia (translation Pepper and Vanilla), which aired on Polish television in the 1980s and ’90s.

In Poland under the communist regime, when obtaining a passport was no easy feat, the series was especially important, as it offered a much needed window on the world to many Poles who would otherwise have few occasions to see what life was like beyond the Iron Curtain.

Footage for the show was collected over the many years that Tony spent exploring remote parts of the world.

One of these trips, for instance, began in 1957. He and his first wife Pierrette drove a Jeep from the southern tip of South America to the northern tip of North America, and then back again. The journey took four-and-a-half years and covered over 180,000 kilometers. They visited 21 countries, crossed 140 rivers and swamps, built 14 bridges, and went through 8 sets of tires.

Pierrette became pregnant during the journey. She gave birth to a baby boy in January of 1959 in Bristol, Connecticut.

The couple decided to name their son Ozana, “after the Indian who saved Halik’s life” in Mato Grosso, Brazil. (According to one account, he was saved amidst a skirmish between two feuding tribes.)

Baby Ozana spent his first years in the wilderness with his parents as they continued their journey, which lasted until 1961.

P.S. Mieczyslaw is pronounced myeh-chih-swaf.

Sources:

Image: Screenshot of the trailer for the documentary Tony Halik (2020)

How did Virna Lisi influence baby names in the 1960s?

Italian actress Virna Lisi (1936-2014)
Virna Lisi

When Italian actress Virna Lisi started appearing in American films in the mid-1960s, American audiences took notice.

How do we know? Well, the baby name Lisi appeared in the U.S. baby name data for the first time in 1965, and, the same year, the baby name Virna re-emerged in the data (after a decades-long absence) with its highest-ever usage.

Girls named VirnaGirls named Lisi
196721.
1966115
196538†8*
1964..
1963..
*Debut, †Peak usage

(It should be noted, of course, that Lisa was the #1 baby name in the nation from 1962 to 1969. No doubt this made the similar — but much rarer — name Lisi sound rather stylish during that decade.)

Virna Lisi was born Virna Lisa Pieralisi in Ancona, Italy, in 1936.

Her father had wanted to call her Siria (“Syria”), but that country’s colonial ruler, France, was at loggerheads with Mussolini and the births registrar accordingly refused to accept the name. The exasperated Pieralisi then made up Virna on the spot.

She started acting as a teenager in Italy, and her success in Italian films eventually led to a brief Hollywood career. She appeared in How to Murder Your Wife (1965) with Jack Lemmon, Not With My Wife You Don’t (1966) with Tony Curtis, and Assault on a Queen (1966) with Frank Sinatra.

But Lisi disliked her “sex symbol” image in America. So she decided to leave. She turned down the lead role in Barbarella, terminated her Hollywood contract, and returned to Europe to play a wider range of characters.

What are your thoughts on the names Virna and Lisi? Which one would you be more likely to use on a modern-day baby?

P.S. Italian actress Anna Maria Pierangeli — better known as Pier Angeli — also had a surname that began with “Pier” (the Italian form of Peter).

Sources:

Image: Screenshot of How to Murder Your Wife

Name quotes #105: Barra, Shirley, Tangela

double quotation mark

From an article about how Storm Barra (which hit the UK and Ireland in December of 2021) came to be named after BBC Northern Ireland weatherman Barra Best:

‘What happened was the head of Irish weather service Met Eireann called me in August and asked me where my name was from and I thought it was a bit strange, I didn’t know why she was asking,’ [Barra Best] told the BBC’s Evening Extra programme.

‘It comes from the south-west of Ireland from Finbarr, St Finbarr in Co Cork and it’s derived from that.’

He continued: ‘She said oh that’s fine, that’s fine. I asked why did you want to know and she said oh you’ll find out in about a month.

‘Of course the email came out and the list of names were announced and she had decided to put my name in there.’

From an article about the increasing popularity of Maori baby names in New Zealand, published in The Guardian (found via Clare’s tweet):

Damaris Coulter of Ngati Kahu descent and Dale Dice of Ngati Hine, Te Aupouri and Nga Puhi [descent] […] [gave] their one-year-old daughter Hinekorako just one name, as was usual pre-colonisation.

Hinekorako’s name came to Dice as he was navigating a waka, a large traditional Maori sailing vessel, from Rarotonga in the Cook Islands back to Aotearoa. “It was coming up to midnight. We came into a little storm. The temperature had dropped … there was thunder … Once we got through the storm we all turned around and just behind us there was this massive white rainbow … It was a lunar rainbow.”

“I told our navigator about it and he goes’ “oh yeah, that’s a tohu (sign), that’s Hinekorako’.” In myth, Hinekorako is also a taniwha (a water spirit), who lives between the spirit and living worlds. Dice wrote the name in his diary and decided that night, were he to ever have a daughter, she would be named Hinekorako.

(According to Encyclopedia Mythica, Hine-korako is “the personification of the lunar bow or halo.”)

From a 1989 Los Angeles Times article called “Names in the News“:

Mark Calcavecchia, who won the British open last month, withdrew from the PGA Championship, which starts Thursday in suburban Chicago, because his wife gave birth to their first child — a seven-pound, six-ounce daughter named Britney Jo.

[To clarify: The baby, born two weeks after the British Open, was named Britney to commemorate the victory.]

From a 2016 article about Pokémon baby names:

I cross-referenced the Social Security Administration’s annual baby name records with all 151 original pocket monsters back through 1995, the year the Pokémon franchise was created. Five species of Pokémon have proven to be appealing baby names for U.S. parents: Tangela, Abra, Paras, Onix, and Eevee.

From a 2013 article about names in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch:

“The Name Game” was a hit for Shirley Ellis in 1965. You know the song: “Shirley-Shirley-bo-burly, banana-fana-fo-furly, fee-fie-foe-murly … Shirley!” She bragged that “there isn’t any name that you can’t rhyme.” While entertaining soldiers in Vietnam, however, she discovered she couldn’t rhyme “Rich” or “Chuck.”

[The other names featured in the original version of the novelty song were Lincoln, Arnold, Tony, Billy, Marsha, and Nick.]