The name Ondina appeared on the SSA’s baby name list for one year only:
- 1970: unlisted
- 1969: unlisted
- 1968: 15 baby girls named Ondina [debut]
- 1967: unlisted
- 1966: unlisted
Why? I have no clue.
Conspicuously high one-time hits like this are sometimes attributable to magazine covers (Theonita is an example of this) but I haven’t found an Ondina on the cover of anything from 1968.
A different version of the name, Ondine, did pop up a few times during my search. Ondine had been the title of a Broadway play in the 1950s and the name of both a Warhol “superstar” and a race-winning yacht, Ondine III, in the 1960s. (Here’s more on Ondine from baby name blog Appellation Mountain.)
But Ondina is still a mystery to me. Do you have any ideas?
(While researching, I stumbled upon another interesting name: Trebisonda. Trebisonda “Ondina” Valla was the first Italian woman to win an Olympic gold medal, in 1936. Her birth name was inspired by the Turkish city of Trabzon, which is Trebisonda in Italian, and her nickname was suggested by a journalist when she was in her teens.)