Babies named for Alla Nazimova

Actress Alla Nazimova in the movie "A Doll's House" (1922).
Alla Nazimova in “A Doll’s House“

Russian-American silent film actress Alla Nazimova (pronounced nah-ZEE-moh-vah) was most popular in the U.S. in the late 1910s and early 1920s.

After becoming a theater star in Russia in the early 1900s, she moved to New York and made her Broadway debut in 1906. Then she successfully transitioned from stage to screen:

In the 1910s Nazimova became one of the first Broadway actresses to match and even surpass her stage success when she became a screen star, reportedly drawing the highest salary in Hollywood from Metro, and creating the type of European exotic with which Pola Negri and, in a different way, Garbo and Deitrich would later become identified.

She was often credited simply as “Nazimova.” Her film company, founded in 1917, was also named Nazimova:

"A Nazimova Production"

The name Nazimova has never surfaced in the U.S. baby name data, but I’ve found several dozen U.S. females named Nazimova. Most were born around the time the actress was at the height of her fame. Some examples…

  • Nazimova Ratleff (née Bordenave), b. 1917 in Louisiana
  • Nazimova Marvine Gatwood (née Edwards), b. 1919 in Ohio
  • Nazimova McKinley (née Hastings), b. 1920 in Indiana
  • Nazimova Goodale (née Hatcher), b. 1920 in Iowa
  • Nazimova Smith, b. circa 1920 in Louisiana
  • Nazimova Davis (née Ebright), b. circa 1920 in Louisiana
  • Nazimova Williams (née Tolbert), b. 1921 in Mississippi
  • Nazimova Dean (née Moore), b. 1921 in Oklahoma
  • Nazimova Sweeney (née Brunson), b. 1921 in Indiana
  • Nazimova Perry, b. 1922 in Pennsylvania
  • Dorothy Nazimova Shaffer (née Montgomery), b. 1922 in Texas
  • Nazimova Regina Fleming (née Jeanfreau), b. 1922 in Louisiana
  • Nazimova Cathrine Naleilehua Katz, b. 1922 in Hawaii
  • Nazimova Brunious (née Santiago), b. 1923 in Louisiana
  • Nazimova Lee (née Holland), b. 1923 in Georgia
  • Nazimova Mae Niedermeyer (née Beckett), b. 1924 in Iowa
  • Nazimova Anderson, b. 1925 in Texas

Alla Nazimova was born in Yalta in the late 1870s. Her birth name was Mariam Edez Adelaida “Alla” Leventon. Her stage surname, Nazimova, is said to have been inspired by the character Nadezhda Nazimova from a Russian novel called Children of the Streets.

What are your thoughts on Nazimova as a given name?

P.S. Nazimova’s goddaughter, Anne Frances “Nancy” Robbins, also became an actress — under the name Nancy Davis. Nancy married fellow actor Ronald Reagan in 1952, and went on to serve as First Lady of the United States during most of the 1980s.

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What brought the baby name Breland back in 1984?

Boxer Mark Breland at the 1984 Summer Olympics
Mark Breland

The other day we talked about two girl names that were influenced by the 1984 Summer Olympics, so today let’s look at two boy names that were influenced by the same event.

The first is Breland, which appeared in the U.S. baby name data once in the 1920s, returned in 1984:

  • 1986: 9 baby boys named Breland
  • 1985: 11 baby boys named Breland
  • 1984: 10 baby boys named Breland
  • 1983: unlisted
  • 1982: unlisted

The man who brought it back was welterweight boxer Mark Breland, who won a gold medal at the Olympics after defeating South Korea’s Young-Su An.

The surname Breland could be either French or Norwegian. The French version was based on the Old French word brelenc, meaning “card table” (i.e., gambler), while the Norwegian version was a place name based on either bre, “glacier,” or breid, “wide.”

The name Tranel, like Ecaterina, was a one-hit wonder in the data in 1984:

  • 1986: unlisted
  • 1985: unlisted
  • 1984: 8 baby boys named Tranel [debut]
  • 1983: unlisted
  • 1982: unlisted

The influence here was 21-year-old, 6′ 5″ athlete Tranel Hawkins, who competed in the 400-meter hurdles. He placed 6th overall, but might have done better if he hadn’t been assigned to Lane 1.

“Lane 1 is like the kiss of death,” Hawkins said.

Which name do you like more, Breland or Tranel?

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Where did the baby name Ecaterina come from in 1984?

Romanian gymnast Ecaterina Szabo at the 1984 Summer Olympics
Ecaterina Szabo

The name Ecaterina was a one-hit wonder in the U.S. baby name data in 1984:

  • 1986: unlisted
  • 1985: unlisted
  • 1984: 10 baby girls named Ecaterina [debut]
  • 1983: unlisted
  • 1982: unlisted

If you were paying attention to sports that summer, no doubt you’ll recall the source: Ecaterina Szabo, the Romanian gymnast who battled it out with Mary Lou Retton at the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles. (Romania was the only Eastern Bloc country that did not boycott the ’84 Games.)

Ecaterina Szabo, 17 years old at the time, was the most successful competitor overall at the 1984 Summer Games, winning four golds and one silver. (In second place was American track and field athlete Carl Lewis.) Mary Lou Retton, who was 16 years old, won one gold, two silvers, and two bronzes.

But what most people remember is Retton coming from behind to beat Szabo in “the big one” — the women’s individual all-around competition — by a mere five-hundredths of a point. (The usage of the baby name Marylou increased in both 1984 and 1985 as a result.)

Ecaterina Szabo, an ethnic Hungarian, was born with the first name Katalin. She told Romanian news site Transylvania Now that her name was changed (from the Hungarian form of Katherine to the Romanian form of Katherine) in order to mask her background:

It happened in 1980 when she participated at the Youth European Championship in Lyon. “This was the place where I arrived as Katalin, and left as Ecaterina,” she remembers. “The name change happened without my knowledge. Actually I didn’t have the chance to realize it, since I never even saw my passport.”

What are your thoughts on the baby name Ecaterina?

P.S. Did you know another one-hit wonder baby name was inspired by a Romanian Olympic gymnast? Check out Comaneci…

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Image: Screenshot of the 1984 Summer Olympics

Where did the baby name Dansby come from in 2016?

Baseball player Dansby Swanson
Dansby Swanson

The surname Dansby debuted as a baby name in the U.S. data in the mid-2010s:

  • 2020: 17 baby boys and 5 baby girls named Dansby
    • 5 in Georgia
  • 2019: 27 baby boys named Dansby
    • 7 in Alabama, 7 in Tennessee
  • 2018: 8 baby boys named Dansby
  • 2017: 9 baby boys named Dansby
  • 2016: 10 baby boys named Dansby [debut]
  • 2015: unlisted
  • 2014: unlisted

Where did it come from?

Professional baseball player Dansby Swanson, who was the first overall pick in the Major League Baseball draft in 2015. He has played for the Atlanta Braves ever since.

He was born in Kennesaw, Georgia, and his full name at birth was James Dansby Swanson. (His middle name is his mother’s maiden name.)

“Dansby” could be a variant of the English surname Danby, which was originally a place name that (like Denby) meant “settlement of the Danes.”

What do you think of Dansby as a first name?

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