What popularized the baby name Rosanna in 1982?

Toto single "Rosanna" (1982)
Toto single

According to the U.S. baby name data, the baby name Rosanna more than doubled in usage in 1982:

  • 1984: 367 baby girls named Rosanna [rank: 527th]
  • 1983: 488 baby girls named Rosanna [rank: 435th]
  • 1982: 492 baby girls named Rosanna [rank: 438th] (peak usage)
  • 1981: 194 baby girls named Rosanna [rank: 821st]
  • 1980: 202 baby girls named Rosanna [rank: 804th]

Here’s a visual:

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

Other spellings of the name (such as Roseanna, Rosana, Rozanna, Roseana, and the one-hit wonder Rosezanna) also saw higher usage that year.

What’s the reason?

The Grammy-winning song “Rosanna” by Los Angeles-based rock band Toto.

It was released in March of 1982 as the first single from the album Toto IV, which also featured the band’s biggest hit, “Africa.”

“Rosanna” peaked at #2 on Billboard‘s Hot 100 chart for five consecutive weeks during July. (The final two weeks, it was second to Survivor’s “Eye of the Tiger.”)

Here’s the music video:

(Fun fact: The woman who played Rosanna in the video, Cynthia Rhodes, went on to play Penny in Dirty Dancing five years later.)

So what’s the story behind the song?

Toto’s David Paich said that he wrote it “about a high school love, one of my first loves.” Around the time he was writing it, another band member, Steve Porcaro, started dating actress Rosanna Arquette. Rosanna’s name happened to “fit perfectly” in the song Paich was writing, so he decided to use it.

So it’s got her name on it, but it’s really about another high school sweetheart, which is how songs happen sometimes.

What are your thoughts on the baby name Rosanna? (How would you spell it?)

Sources: Roseanna (song) – Wikipedia, David Paich of Toto: Songwriter Interviews – Songfacts, SSA

What gave the baby name Elfego a boost in 1959?

The title character from the TV mini-series "The Nine Lives of Elfego Baca" (1958-1960).
Elfego from “The Nine Lives of Elfego Baca“

According to the U.S. baby name data, the rare Spanish name Elfego saw peak usage in 1959:

  • 1961: unlisted
  • 1960: 7 baby boys named Elfego
  • 1959: 10 baby boys named Elfego
  • 1958: unlisted
  • 1957: unlisted

The variant spelling Elfago was a one-hit wonder in the data that year as well.

What gave these names a slight boost?

New Mexican gunfighter and folk hero Elfego Baca (1865-1945).

But not the real Elfego Baca, who wasn’t well-known outside of New Mexico. Instead, Walt Disney’s fictionalized version of him.

From late 1958 to early 1960, Elfego Baca was featured in 10 irregularly-airing episodes of the TV anthology series Walt Disney Presents. (The series had been renamed since the days of Davy Crockett.)

The Baca miniseries, entitled The Nine Lives of Elfego Baca, starred actor Robert Loggia as the title character — a New Mexico lawman during the final years of the Old West. Though the episodes didn’t popularize Baca to the same degree that earlier episodes had popularized Crockett, they did turn Baca into “America’s first Hispanic popular culture hero,” according to one historian.

In his introductions to the episodes, Walt Disney pronounced Baca’s first name the traditional way: EL-fay-go (stress on the first syllable). Characters within the episodes, however, tended to mispronounce it el-FAY-go (stress on the second syllable).

The name is a Spanish form of the Middle English name Alphege, ultimately based on the Old English words ælf, meaning “elf,” and heah, meaning “high, tall.”

What are your thoughts on the name Elfego?

Sources:

Image: Screenshot of the Elfego Baca miniseries

How did Sidney Crosby influence baby names in the 2010s?

Hockey player Sidney Crosby (in 2016)
Sidney Crosby

The surname Crosby began popping up in the U.S. baby name data in the 1910s, but it didn’t start to see significant usage until a century later.

After entering the boys’ top 1,000 for the first time in 2011, it reached peak popularity in 2015:

Boys named CrosbyGirls named Crosby
2018344 [rank: 702nd]19
2017417 [rank: 626th]28
2016428 [rank: 625th]28
2015484† [rank: 578th]19
2014435 [rank: 615th]28
2013378 [rank: 647th]24
2012352 [rank: 672nd]22
2011306 [rank: 741st]25
201018016
20097213
20085510
2007217
2006197
200511.
†Peak usage

What fueled this rise?

Nova Scotia-born professional ice hockey center Sidney Crosby.

He was selected first overall by the Pittsburgh Penguins in the 2005 NHL Draft, and he’s played exclusively with the Penguins ever since.

His first season, as an 18-year-old, he finished runner-up in the vote for the Calder Memorial Trophy, given to the NHL’s top rookie of the year.

After his second season, he was named captain of the Penguins — becoming the youngest team captain in NHL history (at that time).

During his third season, he (and teammates including Evgeni Malkin and Jordan Staal) helped the Penguins reach the Stanley Cup finals.

Finally, in 2009, the Penguins won the Stanley Cup. And they would go on to win it again in both 2016 and 2017 — back-to-back, impressively.

Speaking of winning more than once…Sidney Crosby has also won various league-wide awards (e.g., the Art Ross Trophy, the Hart Memorial Trophy, the Conn Smythe Trophy, the Rocket Richard Trophy) multiple times each.

During the years that Crosby (the name) was picking up steam, usage was highest in two particular states: Pennsylvania and Minnesota.

  • 2010: 180 U.S. boys named Crosby – 18 (10%) in PA, 18 (10%) in MN
  • 2009: 72 U.S. boys named Crosby – 6 (8%) in PA
  • 2008: 55 U.S. boys named Crosby – 8 (15%) in PA, 11 (20%) in MN
  • 2007: 21 U.S. boys named Crosby

The Pennsylvania usage isn’t surprising, but why Minnesota? It could have to do with the fact that, during the single year Sidney Crosby attended Minnesota prep school Shattuck-St. Mary’s, he led their U18 hockey team to a national title (as a 15-year-old).

The success of “Sid the Kid” hasn’t stopped the slow decline of Sidney, but it did give the name a slight boost in Pennsylvania specifically. And it’s likely behind the increased usage of Sid itself, starting in 2006.

Hockey player Sidney Crosby (in 2010)
Sidney Crosby

So has Sidney Crosby influenced baby names in Canada as well? Here’s the Canadian data for both his first name and his last name:

Boys named Crosby (Canada)Boys named Sidney (Canada)
20181130 [rank: 796th]
20171832 [rank: 772th]
20161436 [rank: 716th]
201530 [rank: 797th]39 [rank: 659th]
201428 [rank: 834th]38 [rank: 677th]
201324 [rank: 924th]30 [rank: 785th]
201231 [rank: 760th]31 [rank: 760th]
201123 [rank: 939th]54 [rank: 503rd]
201031 [rank: 767th]59† [rank: 472nd]
2009846 [rank: 576th]
20081350 [rank: 534th]
2007753 [rank: 496th]
2006.33 [rank: 663rd]
20057*20 [rank: 906th]
*Debut, †Peak usage

Crosby, who represents Canada internationally, was a member of Team Canada at both the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver and the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. Canada’s men’s ice hockey team won gold in both tournaments. Notably, in 2010 — on home soil (ice?) — Crosby scored the “golden goal” against Team USA in sudden-death overtime.

The English surname Crosby can be traced back to any of various locations in England called Crosby. The place name is made up of the Old Norse elements kross, meaning “cross,” and byr, meaning “settlement.”

What are your thoughts on the name Crosby?

P.S. A boy born in 2015 was named Malkin Crosby Long after two Penguins players. I discovered him via a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article featuring several of Crosby’s young namesakes.

Sources:

Images: Sidney Crosby 2016-04-28 by Michael Miller under CC BY-SA 4.0; Sidney Crosby (Team Canada) by VancityAllie under CC BY 2.0.

Where did the baby name Miklo come from in 1994?

The character Miklo from the movie "Blood In, Blood Out" (1993).
Miklo from “Blood In, Blood Out“

The curious name Miklo first appeared in the U.S. baby name data in the mid-1990s:

  • 1996: unlisted
  • 1995: 9 baby boys named Miklo
  • 1994: 10 baby boys named Miklo [debut]
  • 1993: unlisted
  • 1992: unlisted

What put it there?

I think the answer is Blood In Blood Out (1993), a movie set in the Mexican-American community of East Los Angeles in the ’70s and ’80s.

The film’s main characters are three young men: mixed-race Miklo (pronounced meek-lo), who has a Mexican mother and a white father, Miklo’s cousins Paco and Cruz, both of whom are fully Chicano.

Miklo’s upbringing…has socialized him into developing a proud Chicano identity. However, his fair complexion, blue eyes, and sandy blond hair frequently serve as a topic of ridicule among relatives and fellow Chicanos, thus painfully reminding Miklo of his undesired whiteness.

Blood In Blood Out didn’t do well at the box office, but has since “attained cult status…as a classic, epic Chicano gangster flick.”

Several sources suggest that miklo (or miclo) might be a Chicano slang term for a light-skinned Hispanic person. If this usage is legit, though, I don’t know whether it predates the film or is due to the film.

In any case, I don’t think Miklo has anything to do with the similar-looking name Miklós (pronounced meek-losh), the Hungarian form of Nicholas that has been popping up in the SSA data since the late ’50s.

What are your thoughts on the name Miklo?

Sources:

Image: Screenshot of Blood In Blood Out