Where did the baby name Amerie come from in 2002?

Amerie's album "All I Have" (2002)
Amerie album

The name Amerie first appeared in the U.S. baby name data in 2002:

  • 2006: 110 baby girls named Amerie
  • 2005: 162 baby girls named Amerie
  • 2004: 67 baby girls named Amerie
  • 2003: 111 baby girls named Amerie
  • 2002: 51 baby girls named Amerie [debut]
  • 2001: unlisted
  • 2000: unlisted

It was one of the highest-debuting names of the year, in fact.

Where did it come from?

Mononymous R&B singer Amerie (pronounced AY-mer-ee), born Amerie Rogers in 1980 to a Korean mother and an African-American father.

Her first solo single, “Why Don’t We Fall in Love” (2002), peaked at #23 on Billboard‘s Hot 100 chart that August.

Here’s the music video for “Why Don’t We Fall in Love”:

Three years later, her memorable single “1 Thing” [vid] became a top-ten hit. The song was also featured on the soundtrack of the Will Smith movie Hitch, nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Female R&B Vocal Performance, and “paved the way for the decade of pop that followed,” according to Rolling Stone.

The success of “1 Thing” accounts for the rise in usage of the name Amerie from 2004 to 2005.

In 2010, Amerie changed the spelling of her name to “Ameriie.” Why? Here’s how she explained it (in early 2015):

It was just something that I did for me, personally. People thought it was just my new stage name, but I legally added the extra “i.” Just cause I wanted to.

Since then, she seems to have reverted to the original spelling — at least publicly. (I’m not sure about legally.)

What are your thoughts on the name Amerie?

Sources:

Babies named for Fletcher’s Castoria

Fletcher's Castoria newspaper advertisement (Jun. 1915)
Castoria newspaper ad (1915)

In yesterday’s post about the name Castara I mentioned a medicine called Castoria, which was a senna-based laxative made for children.

Castoria was developed in the mid-19th century by Massachusetts doctor Samuel Pitcher, who patented the medicine in 1868 and sold it as “Pitcher’s Castoria.” Three years later, the formula was purchased by the Centaur Company (headed by Charles H. Fletcher) and renamed “Fletcher’s Castoria.”

Advertising was the key to Castoria’s success. The Centaur Company “became a pioneer in mass marketing […] distributing millions of printed trade cards, running long-standing advertisements in newspapers and magazines, and painting the sides of hundreds of buildings.” (Case in point: You can see a massive Fletcher’s Castoria ad on the side of a building during the opening seconds of this clip of a train ride on the Brooklyn Bridge, recorded in 1899 by none other than Thomas Edison.) Castoria’s ubiquitous advertisements were so effective that the medicine continued to sell well for many decades — long after its patent had expired in 1885.

Fletcher's Castoria newspaper advertisement (Dec. 1923)
Castoria newspaper ad (1923)

So, was Castoria ever used as a human name?

Yes! In fact, Castoria popped up in the U.S. baby name data for the first and only time in 1919:

  • 1921: unlisted
  • 1920: unlisted
  • 1919: 5 baby girls named Castoria [debut]
  • 1918: unlisted
  • 1917: unlisted

But the SSA’s data doesn’t give a full picture of the name’s actual usage.

Records reveal that hundreds of U.S. babies were named Castoria, and that the majority of these babies were born after the medicine was put on the market. Some examples…

So, how did the medicine come to be called Castoria?

The inventor (Dr. Pitcher) named it after castor oil, a well-known laxative. (Marketing copy from the mid-1870s states, “Castoria is more than a substitute for Castor Oil.”) Castor oil, in turn, was likely named after an older medicine, castoreum — an oily fluid produced by beavers. And castoreum’s name is simply based on castor, the Latin word for “beaver.”

Interestingly, Fletcher’s Castoria remains on the market to this day, though it’s now called “Fletcher’s Laxative.”

P.S. Some of the earliest Castoria ads were rhymed verse that invariably paired “Castoria” with the name “Victoria.” One poem, for instance, included the lines: “The darling girls all named Victoria / And with the boys, they have Castoria.”

P.P.S. Speaking of babies named for laxatives, here’s Laxative Bromo Quinine Crim…

Sources:

Images: Clipping from the Holly Chieftain (18 Jun. 1915); clipping from the Chicago Tribune (16 Dec. 1923)

Rare baby name: Castara

The book "Castara" (1634) by William Habington
“Castara“

While searching for “star” names recently, I discovered the curious name Castara, which was given to dozens of baby girls in the U.S. during the 1800s.

Some examples…

“Castara” reminded me of both Castor, the name from Greek mythology (and also the name of a star, coincidentally), and Castoria, the name of the old-timey patent medicine.

But I think the most likely explanation for this one is literature.

A volume of poetry called Castara was published anonymously in London in 1634. Later editions of the collection included extra poems and revealed the name of the author: William Habington, who’d invented the name “Castara” as a pseudonym for his wife, Lucy Herbert.

Habington’s poems had titles like…

  • “To Castara, Softly singing to her selfe.”
  • “To Castara, Inquiring why I loved her.”
  • “To Cupid, Upon a dimple in Castara’s cheeke.”
  • “To Castara, Upon a trembling kisse at departure.”
  • “To Castara, Weeping.”
  • “To Castara, Upon an embrace.”

Many of the poems praised Castara’s innocence and purity, so I believe Habington created the pseudonym from the Latin word castus, which means “morally pure,” “chaste.” (Castus is the word from which chaste derives, in fact.)

One researcher noted that, after Habington’s poems were published, the name Castara “rapidly [became] a generic name for a woman one might be in love with” in literature. For instance, in British writer Anna Maria Porter’s novel A Sailor’s Friendship (1805), the hero (who was probably modeled after Admiral Horatio Nelson) had a love interest named Castara.

Habington’s poems could be found in anthologies published in the U.S. during the 19th century. Several are featured in Richard Henry Stoddard’s The Loves and Heroines of the Poets (1861), for example. I also spotted mentions of Castara in various American periodicals (e.g., “…eloquent lines of Habington to his Castara…” in a California newspaper in 1857).

Despite this, the name Castara never caught on like some of the other names coined by writers — names such as Lorna, Pamela, Vanessa, and Wendy.

What are your thoughts on the name Castara?

Sources:

Image: Clipping from Castara

Babies named for the book “Starfawn”

The book "Starfawn" (1976) by Byron Preiss and Stephen Fabian
“Starfawn“

While gathering “star” names for yesterday’s post, I came across the curious combination Starfawn.

The name Starfawn was given to several females born in the U.S. in the late 1970s and early ’80s. Typically it was a middle name.

I wonder if the parents of these Starfawns were inspired by the 1976 science fiction book Starfawn, written by Byron Preiss and illustrated by Stephen Fabian.

According to the back cover, the book — an early example of a graphic novel — was a “full-color odyssey into time and space with the crew of the Starship Destiny and the fantastic woman known as Starfawn.” (The character’s name was actually Shalla, and that’s what she was called throughout the book, but the narrator mentioned that he sometimes referred to her as “a star-fawn.”)

Would you ever consider using the name Starfawn?

Sources: Starfawn – ISFDB, Superfawn! – Superhero Novels, FamilySearch.org

Image: Adapted from the cover of Fiction Illustrated #2: Starfawn (published by Pyramid Books)