How did “The Little Mermaid” influence baby names?

The character Ariel from the movie "The Little Mermaid" (1989)
Ariel from “The Little Mermaid“

The Little Mermaid — which marked a return to the Walt Disney company’s tried-and-true formula of creating animated musical adaptations of folktales, fairy-tales, and other well-known stories (e.g., Pinocchio, Cinderella) — was released in theaters in November of 1989.

It went on to become the ninth-highest-grossing film of the year, and kicked off the “Disney renaissance” of the 1990s.

The movie’s protagonist, a teenage mermaid named Ariel (pronounced AIR-ee-el), was the daughter of King Triton, ruler of the undersea kingdom of Atlantica.

Ariel, who had long been fascinated by the human world, fell in love with a human prince — right before rescuing him from a shipwreck.

When Ariel’s father found out that she’d had contact with a human — something that was “strictly forbidden” for merfolk — he became enraged and destroyed her large collection of human artifacts (e.g., a dinner fork, a tobacco pipe).

Distraught, Ariel decided to make a deal with Ursula the sea witch. She would be transformed into a human for three days, and, if she could get the prince to fall in love with her during that time, she would remain a human forever. If not, she would return to the ocean and become Ursula’s prisoner.

A year after The Little Mermaid came out, not only did the name Triton debut in the U.S. baby name data, but the name Ariel — which was already on the rise for baby girls (thanks to a song, a soap opera, and another soap opera) — entered the girls’ top 100 for the very first time:

Girls named ArielBoys named Ariel
19923,961 [rank: 87th]456 [rank: 472nd]
19915,411† [rank: 66th]666† [rank: 360th]
19903,607 [rank: 94th]408 [rank: 482nd]
19891,284 [rank: 209th]383 [rank: 489th]
1988911 [rank: 277th]345 [rank: 493rd]
†Peak usage

A year after that, Ariel reached peak usage (for both genders, interestingly).

Also peaking in 1991 were slew of other spellings: Aerial, Aeriel, Aeriell, Aireal, Airiel, Airielle, Areial, Areil, Arial, Arieal, Ariele, Arielle, Arriel, Arrielle, Auriel, and Ayriel.

So, how did the character come to be called Ariel?

The film’s co-director, Ron Clements, wrote a two-page treatment of The Little Mermaid in January of 1985. His treatment was based on the like-named 19th-century fairy-tale by Danish author Hans Christian Andersen. In the original story, the mermaid was nameless; in the treatment, Clements referred to the mermaid as Ariel.

Years later, Clements deduced that he’d been influenced by the 1984 film Footloose, which featured a female character named Ariel (who, like the mermaid, was a rebellious teenager).

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

P.S. The nine other Disney films released during the “renaissance” period were The Rescuers Down Under, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, The Lion King, Pocahontas, The Hunchback of Notre Dame, Hercules, Mulan, and Tarzan.

P.P.S. Another mermaid movie from the 1980s that influenced U.S. baby names was Splash…

Sources:

Image: Screenshot of The Little Mermaid

What gave the baby name Elaine a boost in 1915?

The character Elaine Dodge from the motion picture serial "The Exploits of Elaine" (1914)
Elaine Dodge from “The Exploits of Elaine”

The baby name Elaine, which was already on the rise in the early 1900s, more than doubled in usage in 1915 specifically:

  • 1917: 1,281 baby girls named Elaine [rank: 160th]
  • 1916: 1,236 baby girls named Elaine [rank: 161st]
  • 1915: 1,212 baby girls named Elaine [rank: 155th]
  • 1914: 568 baby girls named Elaine [rank: 221st]
  • 1913: 411 baby girls named Elaine [rank: 238th]

Why?

Because of fictional character Elaine Dodge — the protagonist of a trio of weekly Hearst-Pathé serials that came out one after the other:

  • The Exploits of Elaine (14 installments released from December of 1914 to March of 1915),
  • The New Exploits of Elaine (10 installments released from April to June of 1915), and
  • The Romance of Elaine (12 installments released from June to August of 1915).

Just like The Perils of Pauline, the three “Elaine” serials could be read in print and seen on film concurrently. Installments were published in the newspapers on Sundays, then premiered at the motion picture houses on Mondays.

Elaine Dodge, an adventurous young woman, teamed up with scientist/detective Craig Kennedy and reporter Walter Jameson to track down various bad guys — a shadowy criminal called “the Clutching Hand” in the first serial, a Chinese gang leader named Wu Fang in the second, and a foreign agent named Marcius Del Mar in the third.

In all three pictures, Elaine was played by actress Pearl White (who’d become famous as the star of The Perils of Pauline).

What are your thoughts on the name Elaine?

P.S. In mid-1915, The Exploits of Elaine was published as a standalone book. The second and third serials were combined into a single volume in 1916.

Sources:

Image: Clipping from Moving Picture World (16 Jan. 1915)

Where did the baby name Diamante come from in 1991?

Mitsubishi Diamante
Mitsubishi Diamante

The name Diamante first appeared in the U.S. baby name data — for both genders, notably — in the early 1990s:

Boys named DiamanteGirls named Diamante
19933517
1992379
199130*6*
1990..
1989..
*Debut

What caused this dual-gender debut?

The Mitsubishi Diamante, a luxury sedan that went on sale in the U.S. in the spring of 1991. (It had been introduced in Japan a year earlier.)

Write-ups about the new car noted that diamante was the Spanish word for “diamond.” Despite this, “Diamante” was pronounced dee-ah-MAHN-tee (as opposed to dee-ah-MAHN-teh) in television commercials.

The car’s name was inspired by Mitsubishi’s emblem, which features three red diamonds.

What are your thoughts on the name Diamante?

P.S. Did you know that “Mitsubishi” essentially means “three diamonds”? It’s made up of the Japanese words mitsu, meaning “three,” and hishi, which denotes “a rhombus or diamond shape.” (The literal meaning of hishi is “water chestnut.”)

Sources:

Image: Clipping from Popular Mechanics (May 1991)

Babies named for Cuthbert Collingwood

Vice-admiral Cuthbert Collingwood (1748-1810)
Cuthbert Collingwood

When Admiral Horatio Nelson was killed during the day-long Battle of Trafalgar in late 1805, Nelson’s second-in-command, Vice-Admiral Cuthbert Collingwood, assumed control of the British fleet. About an hour later, the Royal Navy won the battle.

Over the next few years, dozens of baby boys in England (and elsewhere) were named in honor of Collingwood. Most were given his surname as either a first or middle name, but others received his full name:

  • Cuthbert Collingwood Hope, b. 1805 in England
  • Cuthbert Collingwood Beazley, b. 1806 in England
  • Cuthbert Collingwood Quimby, b. 1806 in the U.S. (Massachusetts)
  • Cuthbert Collingwood Medcalf, b. 1807 in England
  • Cuthbert Collingwood Gordon, b. 1808 in the U.S. (New Hampshire)
  • Cuthbert Collingwood Hall, b. 1809 in England
  • Cuthbert Collingwood Oxley, b. 1810 in Canada

Several of his namesakes were also named after Nelson:

  • Nelson Collingwood Marselis, b. 1806 in the U.S. (New York)
  • Collingwood Nelson Simmonds, b. circa 1806 in England
  • Nelson Collingwood Robins, b. 1809 in England

The rare name Cuthbert (which last appeared in the U.S. baby name data in 1955) derives from the Old English words cuþ, meaning “known,” and beorht, meaning “bright.”

Sources: Cuthbert Collingwood, 1st Baron Collingwood – Wikipedia, Battle of Trafalgar Timeline – National Maritime Museum, FamilySearch.org, Wiktionary

Image: Adapted from Cuthbert Collingwood, Baron Collingwood by Henry Howard