Baby born in Providence, named Providence

"The Banishment of Roger Williams" by Peter F. Rothermel
Roger Williams

English clergyman Roger Williams and his wife, Mary, migrated to the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1631.

Williams was pious and good-natured, but also outspoken about his unorthodox views. He believed, for instance, that church and state should be separate, and that Native Americans should be compensated for their land. These and other “dangerous opinions” led to Williams being banished from the colony in October of 1635.

To evade punishment (i.e., being sent back to England and imprisoned), Williams fled the colony — alone, on foot, during a blizzard in January of 1636. It was a particularly harsh winter, but he was able to survive with the help of the Native Americans.

That spring, after making his way southward, Williams acquired land from the Narragansett and established his own settlement. He wrote:

…having made covenant of peaceable neighborhood with all the sachems and natives round about us, and having, in a sense of God’s merciful providence unto me in my distress, called the place PROVIDENCE, I desired it might be for a shelter for persons distressed for conscience;

In September of 1638, he and his wife welcomed their third child (and first boy). They named him Providence, after his birthplace.

Williams went on to establish the colony of Rhode Island in the mid-1640s. By then, all six of his children (Mary, Freeborn, Providence, Mercy, Daniel, and Joseph) had been born.

P.S. Virginia and Bermuda are two other New World babies named after their birthplaces.

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Image: The Banishment of Roger Williams (c. 1850) by Peter F. Rothermel

Baby born around time of eclipse, named Annular

Annular solar eclipse

In the spring of 1836, a baby boy was born to John and Deborah Taylor in the English city of Salford.

When he was christened at Manchester Cathedral on June 2, he was named John Annular Taylor.

Why the middle name “Annular”?

My guess is that he was born on, or just after, May 15 — the day England witnessed an annular solar eclipse:

Annular solar eclipse over England on May 15, 1836

An eclipse is called annular (meaning “ring-shaped”) if it occurs while the moon is at its farthest distance from Earth (and therefore appears smaller, from our perspective). The result? A ring-of-fire effect when the moon passes before the sun.

The next annular eclipse (visible from the U.S.) will be happening in a few days, on October 14 — don’t forget to check it out!

P.S. If you’re having a solar eclipse baby and “Annular” just isn’t your style, check out this list of baby names inspired by solar eclipses.

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Baby born to Elvis’ granddaughter, named after Elvis’ birthplace

Elvis Presley's childhood home in Tupelo, Mississippi
Elvis Presley’s childhood home

Actress Riley Keogh — daughter of Lisa Marie Presley and granddaughter of Elvis Presley — welcomed a baby girl via surrogate in August of 2022. A year later, in a Vanity Fair cover story, she revealed that her daughter’s name was Tupelo Storm.

Tupelo’s first name is a reference to the northern Mississippi city of Tupelo (pronounced TOO-puh-loh), which is where Elvis was born in 1935. (The Presley family didn’t move to Memphis, Tennessee, until Elvis was a young teenager.)

The city’s name, which was inspired by the abundance of tupelo gum trees in the area, derives from the Creek words ito, meaning “tree,” and opilwa, meaning “swamp.”

Keogh said:

It’s funny because we picked her name before the Elvis movie. I was like, ‘This is great because it’s not really a well-known word or name in relation to my family — it’s not like Memphis or something.’ Then when the Elvis movie came out, it was like, Tupelo this and Tupelo that. I was like, ‘Oh no.’ But it’s fine.

(The biopic Elvis was released in June of 2022.)

The baby’s middle name commemorates Riley Keogh’s late brother, Benjamin Storm Keough.

So far, the name Tupelo has never appeared in the SSA data — but do you think it could in the future? What are your thoughts on Tupelo as a baby name?

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Image: Adapted from Tupelo EAP birthplace IMG 2649 by Bjoertvedt under CC BY-SA 4.0.

What popularized the baby name Celine in the 1990s?

Céline Dion's first English-language album, "Unison" (1990)
Céline Dion album

According to the U.S. baby name data, the name Celine saw a steep rise in the usage during the 1990s:

  • 1999: 394 baby girls named Celine [rank: 617th]
  • 1998: 565 baby girls named Celine [rank: 456th]
  • 1997: 443 baby girls named Celine [rank: 537th]
  • 1996: 271 baby girls named Celine [rank: 774th]
  • 1995: 231 baby girls named Celine [rank: 846th]
  • 1994: 247 baby girls named Celine [rank: 815th]
  • 1993: 157 baby girls named Celine
  • 1992: 121 baby girls named Celine
  • 1991: 77 baby girls named Celine
  • 1990: 52 baby girls named Celine
  • 1989: 43 baby girls named Celine

The name entered the top 1,000 in 1994, and even reached the top 500 (briefly) in 1998. That 1998 spike remained the name’s highest overall usage until the late 2010s.

Here’s a visual:

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

What was behind the rise?

Quebec-born singer Céline Dion, who became one of the dominant pop divas of the mid-to-late 1990s (along with Whitney Houston and Mariah Carey).

She’d been putting out French-language music in Canada for a decade before finally releasing her first English-language album, Unison, in 1990. The album featured the song “Where Does My Heart Beat Now,” which reached #4 on Billboard‘s Hot 100 chart in March of 1991.

This first English-language hit was followed by many more, including…

  • “Beauty and the Beast” (1991), a duet with Peabo Bryson
    • theme song from the 1991 Disney movie Beauty and the Beast
  • “If You Asked Me To” (1992)
  • “The Power of Love” (1993)
  • “Because You Loved Me” (1996)
    • theme song from the 1996 movie Up Close & Personal
  • “It’s All Coming Back to Me Now” (1996)
  • “All by Myself” (1996)
  • “My Heart Will Go On” (1997)
    • theme song from the 1997 movie Titanic

“My Heart Will Go On” was Céline Dion’s biggest hit, and today it’s considered her signature song. Here’s a live performance:

The 5-time Grammy winner was born in March of 1968 in the town of Charlemagne, a suburb of Montreal. Her parents, Adhémar and Thérèse Dion, had a total of fourteen children:

  1. Denise
  2. Clément
  3. Claudette
  4. Liette
  5. Michel
  6. Louise
  7. Jacques
  8. Daniel
  9. Ghislaine
  10. Linda
  11. Manon
  12. Paul (twin)
  13. Pauline (twin)
  14. Céline

Céline, the baby of the family, was more than two decades younger than her oldest sibling, Denise.

How did she come to be named Céline?

Her mother had chosen the name after hearing the song “Céline,” written by the French writer and singer-songwriter Hugues Aufray, who had had great success in Quebec and France during the time Céline’s mother was pregnant with her. “Céline” told the story of a good-hearted, well-behaved girl, the oldest of a large family, whose mother died giving birth to the youngest. The Céline of the song sacrificed her youth to care for her brothers and sisters, and the years had passed without her ever knowing the joys of love.

Hugues Aufray’s song “Céline” [vid] was released in 1966.

Quebec’s baby name data, which only goes back to 1980, doesn’t reveal whether or not the song made the name Céline trendy in Quebec in the late 1960s. But it does show the name declining in usage during the 1980s — despite the fact that a teenage Céline Dion was racking up French-language hits in Quebec throughout the decade.

The French name Céline can be traced back (via the Roman family names Caelinus and Caelius) to the Latin word caelum, which means “heaven.”

What are your thoughts on the name Céline?

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