What gave the baby name Christiaan a boost in 1968?

South African cardiac surgeon Christiaan Barnard (1922-2001)
Dr. Christiaan Barnard

The baby name Christiaan (pronounced KRIS-tee-ahn) — the Dutch and Afrikaans form of Christian — saw peak usage in the U.S. in two different years: 1968 and 1970.

  • 1972: 22 baby boys named Christiaan
  • 1971: 30 baby boys named Christiaan
  • 1970: 43 baby boys named Christiaan
  • 1969: 24 baby boys named Christiaan
  • 1968: 43 baby boys named Christiaan
  • 1967: 8 baby boys named Christiaan
  • 1966: unlisted

The name’s 1968 upswing represents the second-steepest rise among baby boy names that year (after Dustin).

Here’s the graph:

Graph of the usage of the first name Christiaan in the U.S. since 1880.
Usage of the first name Christiaan

What was calling attention to the name Christiaan in the late ’60s and early ’70s?

South African surgeon Christiaan Barnard, who made headlines worldwide after performing the first human heart transplant on December 3, 1967, at Groote Schuur Hospital in Cape Town.

Dr. Barnard led a team of 20 surgeons as they transplanted a heart from the body of donor Denise Darvall (a 25-year-old woman who’d been fatally injured in a car accident) into the body of recipient Louis Washkansky (a 55-year-old man terminally ill with heart disease).

The operation was considered a success, even though Washkansky died of pneumonia 18 days later.

The transplant attracted unprecedented media coverage, turning Dr. Barnard into an overnight celebrity:

Charismatic and photogenic, he appeared on magazine covers, met dignitaries and film stars, drawing crowds and photographers wherever he went.

Dr. Barnard performed a second human heart transplant on January 2, 1968 — just one month after the first. The second recipient, 59-year-old Philip Blaiberg, not only survived the operation, but lived for another 19 months and 15 days before dying of organ rejection in August of 1969.

The success of this second operation “secured the future of heart transplants.” It also likely caused the usage of Christiaan to peak again in 1970.

(That said, news about Dr. Barnard’s personal life may have also been a factor. He divorced his wife of twenty years, Aletta, in mid-1969 and married a 19-year-old Johannesburg socialite named Barbara Zoellner in early 1970.)

I’m not sure how many of the baby boys named Christiaan during the late ’60s and early ’70s were taught to pronounce their names KRIS-tee-ahn, as I couldn’t find any clips of U.S. newscasters using the Afrikaans pronunciation. Even talk show host Dick Cavett defaulted to the American pronunciation, KRIS-chen, when Dr. Christiaan Barnard appeared on The Dick Cavett Show [vid] in May of 1970.

What are your thoughts on the name Christiaan?

Sources:

Image: Adapted from Professor Barnard photo by Jac. de Nijs via Nationaal Archief under CC0.

What popularized the baby name Arsenio in the late 1980s?

Arsenio Hall hosting "The Arsenio Hall Show" (1989-1994)
Arsenio Hall

The name Arsenio, which has been appearing in the U.S. baby name data since the 1910s, shot into the top 1,000 in 1989 and and stayed there for three years in a row:

  • 1992: 47 baby boys named Arsenio
  • 1991: 45 baby boys named Arsenio
  • 1990: 188 baby boys named Arsenio [rank: 743rd]
  • 1989: 397 baby boys named Arsenio [rank: 479th]
  • 1988: 124 baby boys named Arsenio [rank: 854th]
  • 1987: 83 baby boys named Arsenio
  • 1986: 21 baby boys named Arsenio

Here’s a visual:

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

The variant forms Aresenio, Arsenial, Arseno, and Marsenio also popped up for the first and only time in 1989.

What caused this sudden interest in the name Arsenio?

Comedian and actor Arsenio Hall.

In 1987, he became the first African-American to host a late-night talk show with his 13-week stint on The Late Show. (It was originally called The Late Show with Joan Rivers, but, after Rivers was fired, the show was re-titled and featured a series of guest hosts.)

Audiences would have noticed him next in the hit movie Coming to America (1988), which starred Hall’s longtime friend Eddie Murphy.

Several months later, in January of 1989, he kicked off The Arsenio Hall Show — a hip, energetic alternative (“woof, woof, woof!”) to the other late-night talk shows of the era.

Notably, Hall’s show was one of the few on mainstream television to showcase hip-hop culture. Musical guests included N.W.A, Ice-T, Tupac Shakur, LL Cool J, Bell Biv DeVoe, Heavy D, Black Sheep, Kwamé, Tone Loc, A Tribe Called Quest, and Leaders of the New School. He also spotlighted R&B acts like Bobby Brown, En Vogue, New Edition, Troop, Jodeci, and Mariah Carey.

The Arsenio Hall Show was a breakout success. It was particularly popular with young urban audiences. Despite this, ratings began to slip in late 1993 (largely due to scheduling issues) and the show was cancelled in May of 1994.

So where does the name Arsenio come from? It’s a form of the ancient Greek name Arsenios, which is based on the ancient Greek word arsen, meaning “masculine, virile.”

What are your thoughts on the name Arsenio?

P.S. The name’s slight rise in 1983 and 1984 was likely due to Arsenio Hall’s time as a sidekick on an earlier late-night show, Thicke of the Night (1983-1984), which was hosted by Alan Thicke.

Sources:

Image: Screenshot of The Arsenio Hall Show

What popularized the baby name Kayleigh in the 1980s?

The Marillion single "Kayleigh" (1985)
“Kayleigh” single

According to the U.S. baby name data, the name Kayleigh became very popular all of a sudden in the mid-1980s:

  • 1987: 537 baby girls named Kayleigh [rank: 415th]
  • 1986: 748 baby girls named Kayleigh [rank: 321st]
  • 1985: 211 baby girls named Kayleigh [rank: 794th]
  • 1984: 7 baby girls named Kayleigh [debut]
  • 1983: unlisted
  • 1982: unlisted

Kayleigh was the fastest-rising baby name of 1985, in fact.

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

What made it so trendy?

The song “Kayleigh” (1985) by British rock band Marillion.

Several of the band’s singles had done well in the UK up to that point, but the rock ballad “Kayleigh” was their first (and, so far, only) song to reach the U.S. Hot 100, peaking at #74 in late October, 1985.

The lead singer of the band had written the song with several past girlfriends in mind, but the name of the song was inspired by one woman in particular. He explained:

I’d wanted to write a song about a girlfriend I’d split up with, whose name was Kay. Which of course we couldn’t do. So we added her middle name, Lee, and it became Kayleigh instead. […] But it wasn’t just about Kay, it was inspired by three or four different people in my life.

Interestingly, the entire Kaylee name-group was already on the rise before the song was released in mid-1985. For instance, the most popular spelling of the name, Kaylee — which ultimately peaked at 26th in 2009 — jumped well into the top 1,000 (824th) in 1984. The same year, the spelling Kaylie was the 25th-fastest rising girl name (relatively speaking), and girl-name debuts included Caylie, Caleigh, Cayley, Kailie, and Cailey — not to mention Kayleigh itself.

So the song didn’t exactly kick things off. No doubt it contributed to the name’s trendiness, though. It does seem to have given a discernible boost to the spellings Kaleigh, Kalee, Kalie, Kaeleigh, and Kaileigh. And it’s likely behind the debut of Cayleigh in 1986.

So…why was the Kaylee name-group already picking up stream in 1984? I don’t know for certain, but I can point to a couple of possible contributing factors:

  • The trendiness of Kayla in the early ’80s, due largely to a soap opera character: Kayla Brady from Days of Our Lives.
  • The trendiness of Ashley in the early ’80s, due in part to another soap opera character: Ashley Abbott from The Young and the Restless.

What are your thoughts on the baby name Kayleigh? (Do you like this spelling, or do you prefer one of the other spellings?)

P.S. Marillion’s 2nd-biggest song, “Lavender” (1985) — which was the track right after “Kayleigh” on the Misplaced Childhood album — seems to have given the baby name Lavender a nudge in the mid-’80s.

P.P.S. The band’s name, pronounced mar-IH-lee-un, was based on the title of the novel The Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien.

Sources:

Where did the baby name Zoejane come from in 2004?

Zoe Jane Lewis, daughter of Aaron Lewis, lead singer of the band Staind
Zoe Jane Lewis (born in 2002)

The compound name Zoejane first appeared in the U.S. baby name data in 2004:

  • 2006: 8 baby girls named Zoejane
  • 2005: 15 baby girls named Zoejane
  • 2004: 6 baby girls named Zoejane [debut]
  • 2003: unlisted
  • 2002: unlisted

(Most of these babies were probably named Zoe Jane or Zoe-Jane, but the SSA ignores/omits things like spaces, hyphens, and mid-name capitals.)

Beyond the general trendiness of the name Zoe at the time, what was the specific influence behind the debut of Zoejane?

My guess is the rock ballad “Zoe Jane” (2003) by post-grunge band Staind.

Though it failed to chart as a single, “Zoe Jane” was included on Staind’s album 14 Shades of Grey, which reached #1 on the Billboard 200 chart in June.

Here’s the song:

The song was written by Staind singer Aaron Lewis for his first child, Zoe Jane Lewis, who was born on April 5, 2002 — the same day that Layne Staley, one of the lead singers of the grunge band Alice in Chains, died of a drug overdose.

Fate works in strange ways. Not only was Alice in Chains one of Staind’s biggest influences, but when Lewis was growing up Staley was his major source of inspiration, which is why Lewis felt compelled to write “Layne,” a tribute to Staley.

The lyrics of the song “Layne,” which was also on 14 Shades of Grey, mentions this coincidence:

And on that day, a child was born
To someone who you helped along

Lewis and his wife went on to have two more daughters, Nyla Rae and Indie Shay, over the next few years.

What are your thoughts on the name Zoe Jane?

P.S. Another rock band frontman’s firstborn daughter, Nevaeh, also had an influence on U.S. baby names in the early 2000s…

P.P.S. The unrelated book Fifty Shades of Grey came out eight years after (and offered 36 more shades of grey than) the Staind album 14 Shades of Grey.

Sources:

Image: Screenshot of Zoe Jane Lewis from the music video for “So Far Away” by Staind