What gave the baby name Gordon a boost in 1963?

The Cooper family -- Camala, Janita, Trudy, and Gordon -- with Jacqueline and John F. Kennedy (May, 1963)
The Coopers and the Kennedys

The name Gordon, after ranking as one of the top 100 boy names in the nation from the early 1910s to the early 1940s, began to decline in usage. Amid that decline, Gordon saw a conspicuous uptick in 1963:

  • 1965: 1,445 baby boys named Gordon [rank: 178th]
  • 1964: 1,770 baby boys named Gordon [rank: 167th]
  • 1963: 2,084 baby boys named Gordon [rank: 158th]
  • 1962: 1,783 baby boys named Gordon [rank: 173rd]
  • 1961: 1,990 baby boys named Gordon [rank: 165th]

What caused it?

Astronaut Leroy Gordon Cooper (who went by Gordon, or “Gordo”).

Cooper learned to fly planes during his childhood in Oklahoma. After joining the Air Force in 1949, he worked first as a fighter pilot, then as a test pilot.

In 1959, he was selected by NASA to fly spacecraft for the country’s first human spaceflight program, Project Mercury.

In May of 1963, he piloted Mercury’s final crewed mission — which nearly ended in disaster when the spacecraft’s autopilot system failed while Cooper was preparing to re-enter Earth’s atmosphere:

After being strapped in the 6-ft.-wide Faith 7 for nearly a day and a half, he had to take over when the best equipment that the best of science could provide failed. He had to respond with incredible precision to directions from earth; he had to show a kind of skill and nerve and calm that no man has ever had to demonstrate.

Cooper performed a risky manual re-entry and returned to Earth unharmed.

Speaking of Earth, he’d orbited the planet 22 times during the 34 hours and 20 minutes he’d spent in space. (Cooper logged “more spaceflight time than the other five Mercury flights combined.”)

The success of the mission made Gordon Cooper a celebrity. He was honored with several parades (including a ticker-tape parade in New York City), featured on the cover of both Life and Time magazines, and given a number of awards (such as the NASA Distinguished Service Medal, presented by President John F. Kennedy).

The surname Cooper also got a slight boost (as a baby name) in the early ’60s, reaching then-peak usage in 1964:

  • 1966: 15 baby boys named Cooper
  • 1965: 26 baby boys named Cooper
  • 1964: 30 baby boys named Cooper
  • 1963: 18 baby boys named Cooper
  • 1962: 8 baby boys named Cooper

Even Gordon Cooper’s family — his wife Gertrude (“Trudy”) and teenage daughters Camala Keoki (“Cam”) and Janita Lee (“Jan”) — influenced the baby name charts.

Gertrude, Janita, and Camala Cooper on the cover of Cosmopolitan magazine (Sept. 1963)
Trudy, Jan, and Cam Gordon

The baby name Trudy saw its last prominent spike in usage in 1963, and the uncommon names Camala (pronounced CAM-uh-luh) and Janita (pronounced jah-NEE-tuh) both peaked that year as well:

Girls named TrudyGirls named CamalaGirls named Janita
1965584 [377th]2238
1964672 [365th]936
1963851 [325th]37†57†
1962717 [355th]6*26
1961682 [367th].32
*Debut, †Peak usage

(The name Kamala peaked around the same time, but for a different reason.)

Gordo and Trudy met while attending the University of Hawaii. According to one source, they named their daughters “with a Hawaiian nostalgia.”

Ironically, the couple had long been estranged by 1963. They presented themselves as happily married to NASA — and to the public — because the space agency would only work with pilots who had stable home lives.

What are your thoughts on the names of Gordon Cooper’s daughters, Camala and Janita? Which name do you prefer?

P.S. A month after Cooper’s flight, the Soviet cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman (and first civilian) in space.

Sources:

Images:

Babies named for the concept of states’ rights

American general States Rights Gist (1831-1864)
States Rights Gist

In U.S. politics, the idea of states’ rights emerged soon after the creation of the federal government in the 1780s. The first two political parties, in fact, were the Federalists, who advocated for a strong central government, and the Anti-Federalists, who advocated for states’ rights.

The first person to be named after the concept was States Rights Gist, who was born in South Carolina in September of 1831.

His name was no doubt inspired by the Nullification Crisis (1832-33), which ensued “when South Carolina nullified a federal tariff that favored Northern manufacturing over Southern agriculture.” (Note that many babies born during this time period were not named immediately after birth.)

Map of the United States in 1861
The United States in 1861

Several dozen other babies have been named “States Rights” (or something very similar) since then. Most of these babies were born in the southern U.S. during the mid-to-late 19th century. Some examples…

The baptism of States Rights Gist Finley — whose grandfather’s brother was the original States Rights Gist, and whose father was South Carolina politician David E. Finley — was mentioned in a local newspaper:

States Rights Gist Finley (baptism)

So…what became of the original States Rights Gist?

He served as a brigadier general in the Confederate Army during the Civil War, and was killed at the Battle of Franklin in late 1864.

Intriguingly, one of his distant relatives (his father’s second cousin) happened to be named States Gist (b. 1787) — no middle name. Was he named for states’ rights? Was he named for the young United States? We’ll never know. But we do know that he had a half-brother named Independent (b. 1779) and a cousin named Federal Ann Bonaparte (b. 1797).

Sources:

Images: Adapted from States Rights Gist; clipping from the Yorkville Enquirer (1 Apr. 1899)
Map: Adapted from The United States in 1861 (LOC)

Where did the baby name Abilene come from in 1964?

The George Hamilton IV album "Abilene" (1963)
George Hamilton IV album

The place-name Abilene appeared for the first time in the U.S. baby name data in 1964:

  • 1966: unlisted
  • 1965: unlisted
  • 1964: 5 baby girls named Abilene
  • 1963: unlisted
  • 1962: unlisted

What put it there?

A country song.

“Abilene” by George Hamilton IV was released in May of 1963. In August, the song reached #15 on Billboard‘s Hot 100 chart. Soon after that, it began a four-week run atop the Hot Country Singles chart.

Here’s Hamilton’s recording of the song (which starts, Abilene, Abilene/Prettiest town I’ve ever seen):

Primary songwriter Bob Gibson was inspired to compose “Abilene” in the late 1950s after watching the 1946 western Abilene Town. The movie is set in Abilene, Kansas, but here’s what Gibson had to say about the location being referred to in the song:

People had always asked me, “Bob, did you write that song about Abilene, Kansas or Abilene, Texas?” I’d always have to say, “I don’t know.” I didn’t know! Like all good Americans, I learned all of my history from the movies, and I knew that Abilene was this great railhead. I started going down to Kerrville for the folk festival there in 1978, and the first time I got on that stage at Kerrville and sang Abilene, and 5,000 Texans stood up and put their hands of their hearts, I knew right away I’d written it about Abilene, Texas!

The city in Texas was named (in 1881) after the town in Kansas. The town in Kansas, in turn, was named (in the early 1860s) by Eliza Hersey, wife of the town’s first settler, Timothy Hersey. Eliza chose the biblical place-name Abilene (found in Luke 3:1).

What are your thoughts on Abilene as a first name?

Sources:

  • George Hamilton IV – Billboard
  • Gibson, Bob and Carole Bender. Bob Gibson: I Come For To Sing. Naperville, IL: Kingston Korner, 1999.
  • Bearce, Stephanie and the Dickinson County Historical Society. Abilene. Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2012.
  • SSA

The baby name Laniakea

Laniakea Supercluster

The Laniakea Supercluster — the galaxy supercluster that contains the Milky Way — was first described in the science journal Nature in September of 2014.

A couple of weeks ago, one of the co-discoverers of the Laniakea Supercluster, cosmographer Daniel Pomarède, sent out the following tweet:

It’s true — at least 35 U.S. baby girls have been named Laniakea (pronounced lah-nee-uh-KAY-uh) since 2014.

The name didn’t emerge in the U.S. baby name data right away (so I probably won’t add it to the baby name timeline), but I don’t think there’s any doubt that it was influenced by the discovery of the Laniakea Supercluster.

  • 2018: 12 baby girls named Laniakea
  • 2017: unlisted
  • 2016: 6 baby girls named Laniakea [debut]
  • 2015: unlisted
  • 2014: unlisted

The Hawaiian word laniakea is comprised of two shorter Hawaiian words: lani, meaning “heaven” or “sky,” and akea, meaning “spacious” or “wide.” Definitions of laniakea include “wide heavens,” “open skies,” “broad horizons,” and — the one preferred by the astronomers — “immeasurable heaven.”

The supercluster’s name was chosen by Hawaiian language professor Nawa’a Napoleon (whose full name, incidentally, is David John Nawa’akauluaokamehameha Napoleon).

What are your thoughts on Laniakea as a baby name?

Sources:

Image: Adapted from 07-Laniakea (LofE07240) by Andrew Z. Colvin under CC BY-SA 4.0.