Baby born in taxi, named for driver (1930)

taxis

On December 4, 1930, a baby boy was born in a taxi cab en route to the hospital in Ogden, Utah.

The baby’s parents, Osako and Clarence Uno, both originally from Japan, decided to name him Raymond Sonji Uno — first name in honor of the cab driver, Raymond Harris.

Three days after Raymond’s 11th birthday, Japanese forces attacked Pearl Harbor. Tens of thousands of Japanese-Americans were promptly rounded up and sent to internment camps for the remainder of WWII. (The Uno family was imprisoned at Heart Mountain in Wyoming.)

Despite this experience, Raymond Uno joined the U.S. Army and served in the Korean War. He attended both college and law school at the University of Utah. And, in 1976, he became the very first ethnic minority judge in the state of Utah.

P.S. Raymond and his wife Yoshiko had five sons: Tab (b. 1955), Kai, Mark, Sean, and Lance. Tab’s name may have been inspired by Tab Hunter, and Lance’s could have been influenced by the TV show Lancer.

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Image: Adapted from Cinema Shooting by Alex Proimos under CC BY 2.0.

Baseball fan makes bet, names baby after Mookie Betts

Baseball player Mookie Betts
Mookie Betts

In August of 2023, baseball player Mookie Betts of the Los Angeles Dodgers was getting ready to go up to bat when a fan said, “Mook, if you hit a home run I’ll name my daughter, her middle name, Mookie.”

Here’s more of their short conversation (according to a video that Betts posted to Twitter):

And I heard this, and I laughed, and he said he was serious.

So I turned around and said, “Nah, don’t do that bro. Don’t do that.”

He said, “No, I’m going to do it.”

I said, “Your wife wouldn’t like, bro, don’t do that.”

Betts proceeded to “hit a 436-foot blast to left field, his longest home run as a Dodger.”

He circled the bases and, when he returned, he fist-bumped the fan, Giuseppe Mancuso.

And then, like a couple weeks later, I see on Twitter the birth certificate for Francesca Mookie Mancuso. Shout out to you Giuseppe. I can’t wait to meet Francesca.

Mookie Betts’ nickname, which was chosen for him when he was a baby, was inspired by that of basketball player Daron Oshay “Mookie” Blaylock. (Blaylock’s nickname was given to him by his older sisters.)

So what’s Mookie’s real name?

Markus Lynn Betts. He was born in Tennessee in 1992 to sports-loving parents Willie Mark Betts and Diana Benedict, who “borrow[ed] from Willie’s middle name and [Diana’s] middle name” to create “what they hoped would be fortuitous initials: MLB” — the acronym for Major League Baseball, of course.

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Image: Adapted from Mookie Betts (53182259916) by Erik Drost under CC BY 2.0.

Baby born into Hogg family, named Ima

Texas philanthropist Ima Hogg (1882-1975)
Ima Hogg

Arts patron and philanthropist Ima Hogg was born in Mineola, Texas, in 1882.

Her parents were Sarah Ann Stinson and James Stephen Hogg — who became the attorney general of Texas in the late 1880s, then the first native-born governor of Texas in the early 1890s.

Ima’s birth occurred a couple of years after the death of Jim’s older brother, lawyer and writer Thomas Elisha Hogg. Tom had become Jim’s legal guardian (and father figure) in the mid-1860s.

In honor of his late brother, Jim Hogg decided to call his baby girl Ima, which was a name Tom had used for a female character in his Civil War poem The Fate of Marvin (1873). Here’s an excerpt:

A Southern girl, whose winsome grace
And kindly, gentle mien betrayed
A heart more beauteous than her face.
Ah! she was fair: the Southern skies
were typed in Ima’s heavenly eyes; …

(Notably, the poem featured two female characters. The second was Ima’s sister, Lelia.)

Ima Hogg, who had no middle name, later recalled: “Grandfather Stinson lived fifteen miles from Mineola and news traveled slowly. When he learned of his granddaughter’s name he came trotting to town as fast as he could to protest, but it was too late. The christening had taken place and Ima I was to remain.”

Throughout her life, Ima Hogg put a great deal of effort into downplaying her name. She had a “distinctive signature that rendered the first part [of her name] almost illegible,” for instance, and she used either “Miss Hogg” or “I. Hogg” on her personal stationery. Among acquaintances, she was known simply as “Miss Ima.”

In her early 90s, Miss Ima remarked to a friend, “You know, if I had been born in Scotland, my name would probably have been Imogene.”

Not long afterward, she began to call herself Imogene. The whimsical name change was a well-kept secret. Even some of the people closest to her never knew it, but her last passport was issued to Ima Imogene Hogg.

Ima Hogg passed away in 1975. Contrary to persistent rumors, she never had a sister named “Ura.” In fact, she never had any sisters at all — just three brothers: William Clifford, Michael Stephen, and Thomas Elisha. (William’s middle name honored his mother’s half-sister Clifford, who went by “Cliffie.”)

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Image: Adapted from Ima Hogg

How did Sonny and Cher influence baby names in the 1970s?

Sonny & Chér's debut album "Look at Us" (1965)
Sonny & Chér album

Folk-rock duo Sonny & Cher (pronounced shair) — made up of Salvatore “Sonny” Bono and Cherilyn “Cher” Sarkisian — met in 1962 and got married in 1964.

Soon after, they scored their first big hits: “I Got You Babe,” which ranked #1 on Billboard‘s Hot 100 chart for three weeks straight in August of 1965, followed by “Baby Don’t Go,” which peaked at #8 in October.

Over the next few years, the pair put out several more successful singles, such as “The Beat Goes On,” which reached #6 in early 1967. Cher also released several solo singles, including the top-10 hits “Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)” and “You Better Sit Down Kids.”

As a result, the name Cher returned to the U.S. baby name data in 1965 (after a one-year absence) and began rising in usage:

  • 1967: 43 baby girls named Cher
  • 1966: 32 baby girls named Cher
  • 1965: 18 baby girls named Cher
  • 1964: unlisted
  • 1963: 12 baby girls named Cher

Interestingly, during the second half of the ’60s (and into early ’70s), Cher’s name was typically written with an accent mark over the e on record covers:

Detail from the cover of the album Chér (1966)
“Chér”

I’m not sure how many of Cher’s namesakes similarly wrote their names with an accent mark, though, because the SSA’s data doesn’t include diacritics (among other things).

After several years of success, Sonny & Cher’s popularity began to wane. Here’s how Life magazine accounted for the decline:

Sonny and Cher had about two good years before, along with a lot of other singers of the class of ’65, they disappeared from the record charts and radio. […] They lost the young when acid rock took over from their simple, easy beat.

So the couple went on the road, performing in nightclubs. They developed an act that involved both music and comedy.

They also welcomed their only child, a daughter named Chastity Sun, in March of 1969. The baby had been conceived while Cher was filming the (unsuccessful) movie Chastity, which was released several months later, in June.

Right on cue, the rare name Chastity appeared for the first time in the U.S. baby name data in 1969 — thanks to the baby, or to the movie, or both.

Sonny and Cher on the "Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour" (Mar. 1972)
Sonny and Cher

Their nightclub act led to them being re-discovered by a CBS executive, who gave them their own TV variety show, The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour, which premiered in August of 1971. The series quickly became popular and remained so throughout its four-season run.

While the show was on the air, Cher continued releasing solo singles. In fact, three of her songs reached the top spot on the Hot 100:

  • “Gypsys, Tramps & Thieves,” which peaked at #1 in November of 1971,
  • “Half-Breed,” in October of 1973, and
  • “Dark Lady,” in March of 1974.

In response to Sonny and Cher’s second wave of popularity, the usage of the baby names Sonny and Cher increased in 1972:

Girls named CherBoys named Sonny
1974103281 [rank: 475th]
1973178 [rank: 760th]274 [rank: 476th]
1972235† [rank: 650th]263 [rank: 486th]
1971110206 [rank: 567th]
197072192 [rank: 587th]
†Peak usage

Cher’s birth name, Cherilyn, also saw a nearly six-fold increase in usage that year:

  • 1974: 112 baby girls named Cherilyn
  • 1973: 84 baby girls named Cherilyn
  • 1972: 161 baby girls named Cherilyn [rank: 824th]
  • 1971: 27 baby girls named Cherilyn
  • 1970: 23 baby girls named Cherilyn

How did she come to have the name Cherilyn? Here’s how Cher’s mother, actress Georgia Holt, explained it:

The first part was for Lana Turner’s daughter. I loved that name Cheryl. And the second part was for my mother, Lynda.

Chastity, Sonny and Cher on the "Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour" (Sept. 1973)
Chastity, Sonny, and Cher

The couple’s young daughter Chastity was also featured on The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour dozens of times. These appearances propelled the name Chastity into the top 1,000 in 1972, then the top 500 in 1973:

  • 1974: 749 baby girls named Chastity [rank: 311th]
  • 1973: 544 baby girls named Chastity [rank: 380th]
  • 1972: 220 baby girls named Chastity [rank: 675th]
  • 1971: 50 baby girls named Chastity
  • 1970: 40 baby girls named Chastity

By 1974, the couple’s marriage was on the rocks. The TV series ended in May of that year, Sonny and Cher’s divorce was finalized in mid-1975.

In early 1976, Sonny and Cher put their differences aside to co-host a new version of the show, simply called The Sonny & Cher Show.

In July of 1976, Cher welcomed a baby boy named Elijah Blue with her second husband, musician Gregg Allman of The Allman Brothers Band. Two months later, when The Sonny & Cher Show resumed after a summer break, Cher and Sonny spoke about Elijah Blue on the air.

The following year, the usage of the baby name Elijah increased by more than 67%:

  • 1978: 547 baby boys named Elijah [rank: 322nd]
  • 1977: 504 baby boys named Elijah [rank: 350th]
  • 1976: 301 baby boys named Elijah [rank: 452nd]
  • 1975: 263 baby boys named Elijah [rank: 491st]
  • 1974: 288 baby boys named Elijah [rank: 472nd]

The second iteration of the TV series lasted until August of 1977, and Cher’s tumultuous second marriage ended not long after that.

In late 1978, Cher filed a name-change petition in Los Angeles Superior Court. Her request to shorten her legal name to the mononym Cher was granted in early 1979.

Decades later, she said:

For so long I was “Cher from Sonny and Cher.” And then I had two children, and each had a different father with a last name that I’d taken on. One day I just realized, “I’m Cher, I don’t need anything else.”

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Third and fourth images: Screenshots of the Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour (episodes from Mar. 1972 and Sept. 1973)