Where did the baby name Sayward come from in 1978?

The character Sayward from the TV miniseries "The Awakening Land" (1978).
Sayward from “The Awakening Land“

In 1978, the interesting name Sayward debuted as a girl name in the U.S. baby name data:

  • 1980: 26 baby girls named Sayward
  • 1979: 12 baby girls named Sayward
  • 1978: 22 baby girls named Sayward [debut]
  • 1977: unlisted
  • 1976: unlisted

Where did it come from?

A three-part TV miniseries called The Awakening Land, which aired on NBC in February of 1978. The miniseries chronicled the struggles of pioneer woman Sayward Luckett, who moved with her family to the unsettled Ohio Valley in the last years of the 1700s.

Sayward was played by played by Elizabeth Montgomery (who was playing Samantha on Bewitched a decade earlier). Montgomery was nominated for the Emmy for “Outstanding Lead Actress in a Limited Series” for her portrayal of Sayward.

And Sayward wasn’t the only character with an interesting name. Her parents were Worth and Jary; her younger sisters were Genny, Achsa, and Sulie; her husband was Portius; her children included sons Resolve, Kinzie, and Chancey and daughters Huldah, Sulie, and Dezia.

The name Sulie, used for two different characters, also debuted in the data in 1978:

  • 1980: unlisted
  • 1979: 5 baby girls named Sulie
  • 1978: 5 baby girls named Sulie [debut]
  • 1977: unlisted
  • 1976: unlisted

And the name Chancey, used for Sayward’s youngest son, saw peak usage the same year:

  • 1980: 37 baby boys named Chancey
  • 1979: 24 baby boys named Chancey
  • 1978: 53 baby boys named Chancey [peak]
  • 1977: 17 baby boys named Chancey
  • 1976: 22 baby boys named Chancey

The story was originally a trilogy of books published in the 1940s and ’50s by Conrad Richter. The third book, called The Town, won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1951.

In the books, the Luckett family had one more child, a boy named Wyitt, and Sayward and Portius had a total of ten children (sons Resolve, Guerdon, Kinzie, and Chancey; daughters Sulie, Huldah, Libby, Sooth, Dezia, and Massey).

What are your thoughts on the baby name Sayward? (Or on any of the other names in the series?)

Source: The Awakening Land – IMDb

Where did the baby name Averell come from in 1956?

Politician W. Averell Harriman (1891-1986)
W. Averell Harriman

In 1956, the rare name Averell appeared for the first time in the U.S. baby name data:

  • 1958: unlisted
  • 1957: 6 baby boys named Averell
  • 1956: 6 baby boys named Averell [debut]
  • 1955: unlisted
  • 1954: unlisted

My best guess on this one is businessman and politician William Averell Harriman, who served as the Governor of New York from 1955 to 1958. He was also a candidate for the Democratic presidential nomination twice: in 1952 and in 1956.

His middle name — also his mother’s maiden name — looks to be a variant of Averill, which has several possible derivations, including the Old French word Avrill (meaning “April”) and the English place name Haverhill, made up of the Old English words hafri (“oats”) and hyll (“hill”).

(To complicate things…socialite “Mrs. Averell Clark Jr.” of Seattle was on the cover of LIFE in late 1955. This may have given the name an extra nudge. Incidentally, Mrs. Clark’s first name was Armene, and her mother’s was Armenouhie. The family was of Armenian descent.)

P.S. Harriman also developed America’s first destination winter resort — Sun Valley, Idaho — in the 1930s.

Sources:

Image: Adapted from Averell Harriman (public domain)

What turned Greer into a girl name in the early 1940s?

Actress Greer Garson (1904-1996)
Greer Garson

From the 1910s to the 1930s, the rare name Greer occasionally popped in the in the U.S. baby name data as a boy name. In the early 1940s, though, it suddenly started being given to baby girls:

  • 1943: 37 baby girls and 10 baby boys named Greer
  • 1942: 15 baby girls and 6 baby boys named Greer
  • 1941: 5 baby girls named Greer
  • 1940: unlisted
  • 1939: unlisted

In fact, from 1941 onward, the name Greer has been given more often to baby girls than to baby boys:

Graph of the usage of the baby name Greer
Graph of the usage of the name Greer

What caused the switch?

Red-haired British actress Greer Garson, who was most popular in America during the early-to-mid 1940s. She was nominated for the Oscar for Best Actress seven times, though she won only once (for her role in the 1942 movie Mrs. Miniver).

Her birth name was Eileen Evelyn Greer Garson; Greer was her mother’s maiden name. She began going by “Greer Garson” in the early 1930s, while she was still a stage actress in England.

Louis B. Mayer, head of MGM studios, discovered Garson in 1937 while he was abroad hunting for talent. After that particular trip, he sailed back to the U.S. with Garson and several other finds:

Also on board were two Austrian actresses named Hedy Kiesler and Rose Stradner, screenwriter Walter Reisch, and two singers, Hungarian Ilona Hajmassy, and Polish Miliza Korjus. While Mayer renamed Hedy Kiesler “Hedy Lamarr” and changed Ilona Hajmassy to “Ilona Massey,” he was stumped when it came to Greer and Miliza Korjus. Ultimately, he settled with Howard Strickling [head of MGM’s publicity department] to start a publicity campaign for Korjus (“her name rhymes with gorgeous!”), and left Greer’s name alone. But for years he would continue to complain that her name was not feminine enough.

The surname Greer is related to the personal name Gregory, which means “watchful, alert.”

What are your thoughts on the name Greer? Do you like it better as a girl name or as a boy name?

P.S. The top image of (a very bejeweled) Greer Garson comes from her appearance on the TV game show “What’s My Line?” in April of 1958.

P.P.S. At the height of her fame, Greer Garson owned two standard poodles with the rhyming names Gogo and Clicquot (pronounced klee-koh).

Sources:

Where did the baby name Dhana come from in 1964?

The character Dhana Mercier from the movie "The 7th Dawn" (1964)
Dhana Mercier from “The 7th Dawn“

The name Dhana first appeared in the U.S. baby name data in the mid-1960s:

  • 1966: 12 baby girls named Dhana
  • 1965: 26 baby girls named Dhana
  • 1964: 23 baby girls named Dhana [debut]
  • 1963: unlisted
  • 1962: unlisted

Where did it come from?

A character named Dhana (pronounced DAH-nah) from the 1964 movie The 7th Dawn.

The film is set in British Malaya during the 1950s, against the backdrop of the guerrilla war being fought between Malaysian Communists (who want an independent socialist state) and the British military (who want to protect British colonial interests).

Dhana Mercier (played by French actress Capucine), who has been living peacefully in Malaya since the end of WWII, gets caught up in the conflict unwittingly.

The 7th Dawn was based on the book The Durian Tree (1960) by Australian writer Michael Keon.

Interestingly, the name Dhana debuted the same year that the similar-looking name Djuna debuted. Which of these two names do you prefer?

Sources: The 7th Dawn – AFI, The 7th Dawn (1964) – IMDb, SSA