Baby Name: Violet

The rare name Vidalia returned to the U.S. baby name data in 1996, then saw a spike in usage the very next year:

• 1999: 6 baby girls named Vidalia
• 1998: 13 baby girls named Vidalia
• 1997: 17 baby girls named Vidalia
• 1996: 11 baby girls named Vidalia
• 1995: unlisted
• 1994: unlisted

That 1997 high-point remained Vidalia’s peak usage for over two decades.

What inspired this sudden interest in the name Vidalia?

The country song “Vidalia” (pronounced vie-DAYL-ya) by Sammy Kershaw. The song was released in mid-1996 and, later the same year, reached #10 on Billboard‘s “Hot Country Songs” chart.

The song is about a girl named Vidalia whose parents combined their own names (“Your dear mama Violet/And your proud daddy Dale”) to come up with a name that happened to be the name of an onion — an unusually sweet onion, but an onion nonetheless (“Sweet Vidalia/You always gotta make me cry”).

Here’s what it sounds like:

The Vidalia onion — Georgia’s official state vegetable — was first discovered/grown near Vidalia, Georgia, in the early 1930s. (In fact, an old Atlanta Journal-Constitution article reveals that 5 of the baby Vidalias born between 1990 and 2008 were born in Georgia specifically.)

The town of Vidalia may have been named in honor of Spanish aristocrat Don José Vidal, or after Vidalia, Louisiana (which itself was named for José Vidal).

The surname Vidal can be traced back to the Latin personal name Vitalis, which comes from the Latin word vita, meaning “life.”

What are your thoughts on the baby name Vidalia?

(h/t to Jack in the comments for letting me know about the song!)

Sources:

• Vidalia (song) – Wikipedia
• About Vidalia Onions
• Georgia Names – Food and Drink – Atlanta Journal-Constitution (via Internet Archive)
• Hanks, Patrick. (Ed.) Dictionary of American Family Names. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.

[Latest Update: Aug. 2021]