What gave the baby name Latifah a boost in the early 1990s?

Queen Latifah's album "All Hail the Queen" (1989).
Queen Latifah album

The name Latifah, which has been appearing the U.S. baby name data since the 1970s, saw a dramatic increase in usage in the early 1990s. It even reached the top 1,000 twice.

  • 1993: 73 baby girls named Latifah
  • 1992: 251 baby girls named Latifah [rank: 803rd]
  • 1991: 150 baby girls named Latifah
  • 1990: 300 baby girls named Latifah [rank: 702nd] – peak usage
  • 1989: 93 baby girls named Latifah
  • 1988: 8 baby girls named Latifah

(The spelling Latifa also saw peak usage in 1990, and the versions Latifha, Latiffa, and Latifia debuted that year as well.)

Why?

Because of socially conscious hip-hop artist Queen Latifah.

She rose to fame with the release of her debut album, All Hail the Queen, released in November of 1989. It spawned five singles, including “Ladies First” and “Come Into My House.” Her follow-up album, released in mid-1991, wasn’t as commercially successful but does account for the second spike in usage in 1992.

After her initial success as a rapper, Queen Latifah branched out into acting. One of her most memorable early roles was that of Khadijah James on the TV series Living Single (1993-1998).

Queen Latifah was born Dana Elaine Owens in New Jersey in 1970. The “Latifah” part of her stage name — which she pronounces with a somewhat extended first syllable, “laa–tifah” — began as a childhood nickname:

Q: Did you choose it for yourself?

A: No, actually it was my cousin — well, sort of, I sort of chose it. We were going through the Muslim book of names when I was eight. My cousin Sharonda is Muslim, and so we came across Latifah, and I was like, “Oh, I like that.” She was like, “Yeah, I’m gonna give you that name. That name should be yours.” So, I kept it, ever since I was eight, through high school and whatever.

Queen Latifah was drawn specifically to the meaning of the Arabic name Latifah, which she has defined in various interviews using words like “delicate,” “sensitive,” “kind,” and “nice.” (The site Behind the Name defines the masculine version, Latif, as “gentle, kind.”)

What are your thoughts on name Latifah? (Do you like it more or less than the name Dana?)

Sources:

Where did the baby name Carrieanne come from in 1968?

The Hollies single "Carrie Anne" (1967)
The Hollies single

The song “Carrie Anne” by the British band The Hollies came out in May of 1967. It had been written by band member Graham Nash about singer Marianne Faithfull, but Graham was too shy to use Marianne’s real name in the lyrics, so “Carrie Anne” was substituted. The song peaked at #9 on Billboard‘s Hot 100 chart a few months later, in August.

The same year, various versions of the name debuted in the U.S. baby name data. It wasn’t until the next year, though, that the spelling Carrie Anne finally showed up:

Name1966196719681969
Carrieann.20*2718
Kariann.171720
Carianne.11*89
Karianne.6*1917
Cariann.5*1316
Carriann.5*8.
Carrianne..10*5
Carrieanne..7*6
Totals:.6410991
*Debut

Here’s the band performing the song in 1969. (Graham Nash had moved on to Crosby, Stills & Nash by this point, so he’s not part of the performance.)

Similar names featuring “Kerry,” like Kerrianne, also saw higher usage in the late ’60s. Three of these Kerry-variants (Kerryanne, Kerianne, & Keriann) debuted in ’68.

One non-U.S baby who was named Carrie Anne in 1967 was Canadian actress Carrie-Anne Moss, who went on to star in The Matrix as Trinity — the character that popularized the baby name Trinity impressively during the early 2000s.

The song was also one of the factors behind the swift rise of the name Carrie during the 1970s:

  • 1972: 5422 baby girls named Carrie
  • 1971: 5976 baby girls named Carrie
  • 1970: 4976 baby girls named Carrie
  • 1969: 3887 baby girls named Carrie
  • 1968: 3978 baby girls named Carrie
  • 1967: 3196 baby girls named Carrie
  • 1966: 2475 baby girls named Carrie

“Carrie Anne” kicked things off, but the rise was later fueled by actress Caroline “Carrie” Snodgress of the film Diary of a Mad Housewife (1970), the Stephen King book Carrie (1974), and the book-based movie Carrie (1976) — which featured Piper Laurie and a young John Travolta.

The baby name Carrie saw peak usage in 1976 and 1977, reaching 28th place in the rankings both years.

Do you like the name Carrie? How about the combo Carrie Anne?

Sources: The Hollies, Carrie-Anne, Chart History | Billboard, Carrie Anne – Wikipedia, Who’s that girl? Meet the muses who inspired some of our most iconic pop songs – Daily Mail

Where did the baby name Cymande come from in 1973?

Cymande's self-titled debut album (1972).
Cymande album

The unique name Cymande has shown up in the U.S. baby name data just once so far, in the early 1970s:

  • 1975: unlisted
  • 1974: unlisted
  • 1973: 9 baby boys named Cymande [debut]
  • 1972: unlisted
  • 1971: unlisted

Why?

Because of the influence of eclectic British funk band Cymande, made up of nine Caribbean-born, London-based musicians. The band “weld[ed] together the diverse strands of reggae and Rastafarian rhythms with funk, soul, R&B, jazz, rock, African music and West Indian folk.”

Their first album, the self-titled Cymande (1972), featured their biggest single: “The Message,” which reached 48th on Billboard‘s Hot 100 chart in March of 1973.

So where did the name “Cymande” come from?

Many sources repeat the claim that it was derived from a Calypso word meaning “dove” (the band’s emblem). That’s not quite the story, though. Two of the band members discussed the origin of the name with Rolling Stone in 2016:

[Steve] Scipio: The dove represents peace and love and for us, with our Caribbean heritage, it’s also connected with a very popular calypso song [“Dove and Pigeon”] that had a dove as a central character.

[Patrick] Paterson: The hook was “coo-coo-coo-coo-fan-cy-mandy.”

Scipio: “Fan-cy-mandy!” That’s where we got the name, Cymande from.

The song “Dove and Pigeon” [vid] was written by Tobagonian musician Lord Nelson and released in 1963. The line they’re referencing is hard to make out (one music blogger transcribed it “coo coo coo-coo bansimande”), but the last three syllables sound like see-mahn-dee.

At the start of the 1974 Cymande song “Promised Heights” [vid], one of the band members pronounces the band name sih-mahn-day (roughly).

What are your thoughts on the name Cymande?

Sources: Cymande, London’s Greatest Funk Band, on Return to Stage, Interview: British Funk Icons Cymande, Cymande “The Message” Chart History – Billboard, Dove and Pigeon (song) – Guanaguanare: The Laughing Gull

What gave the baby name Vanna a boost in the 1980s?

Game show hostess Vanna White on "Wheel of Fortune" (January, 1986)
Vanna White on “Wheel of Fortune“

The baby name Vanna only saw a smattering of usage every year until the early 1980s, when it suddenly became trendy:

  • 1988: 58 baby girls named Vanna
  • 1987: 87 baby girls named Vanna
  • 1986: 111 baby girls named Vanna [peak]
  • 1985: 71 baby girls named Vanna
  • 1984: 39 baby girls named Vanna
  • 1983: 21 baby girls named Vanna
  • 1982: 7 baby girls named Vanna
  • 1981: 8 baby girls named Vanna
Graph of the usage of the baby name Vanna in the U.S. since 1880
Usage of the baby name Vanna

The like-sounding names Savannah and Savanna also got a boost during that time period, and the spelling variant Vannah debuted the year Vanna hit peak usage.

What spurred all this interest in the name Vanna?

If you owned a TV set during the ’80s, you already know the answer: Vanna White, hostess of the popular game show Wheel of Fortune.

Vanna White was chosen out of a field of 200 hopefuls to join host Pat Sajak on the show in December of 1982. (The original hostess, Susan Stafford, quit in October.)

Her job essentially consisted of walking in front of a puzzle board — sometimes right to left, sometimes left to right — and turning tiles to reveal letters as contestants made their guesses. (Today she still walks back and forth, but the puzzle board letters are touch-activated.)

Wheel of Fortune became the highest-rated syndicated show on television in the mid-1980s. As a result, Vanna White became “TV’s most improbable cult heroine.” She became so popular, in fact, that the press dubbed the phenomenon Vanna-mania.

(Several years after peak Vanna-mania, one reporter noted that it “was one of the oddest phenomenons of our time, bestowing superstar status on a woman whose only obvious skill was turning letters on cue.”)

By early 1986, Vanna White knew she had multiple namesakes:

“I’ve gotten tons of fan mail,” she marvels. “Love letters, marriage proposals, children being named after me, which is quite an honor. Every year on Sept. 4, I get a picture of this adorable little Vanna.”

So, where did the original Vanna get her unusual first name?

[T]he name Vanna came from my grandmother’s next-door neighbor. Her name was Vana Woorell … and she spelled her name with one n … my mother liked the name so much, she said, Well, I’m gonna name my daughter Vanna with two n‘s.

What are your thoughts on the name Vanna? Would you use it?

Sources:

Image: Screenshot of Wheel of Fortune