It's request hour here at WBNW, with this post going out to the listeners...er, readers who asked for some "one-hit wonders." Those are the baby names that made the U.S. top-1000 name charts one year, never to be heard from again. Where did they come from, and where are they now?
I've run the calculations and I now have the definitive list of the names that appeared on the charts exactly once from the 1880s through the 1980s, and never since. Any guess how many? 860 names. It's a big number, but not really surprising given that we're spanning 110 years of baby naming style. The list reflects passing fashions, creative spellings, historical moments and waves of immigration. It's a fascinating collection of styles ranging from what-were-they-thinking to why-didn't-I-think-of-that. Today I'm going to describe the one-hit wonders as a group, and I'll highlight various discoveries over the coming weeks.
Before we delve into stats and methods, a few choice names:
- Euclid and Pliny
- Sable and Ermine
- Profit, Worthy and Wealthy
And now, the fine print. My first step was to classify the one-hit names into three broad categories:
1. Data entry artifacts (E.g. Infant, Christop, girls named Melvin)
2. Variant spellings of more common names with the same sound
3. Pure one-and-done names
There were plenty of judgment calls along the way. Were there really boys named Lottie? Is Darlyne pronounced the same as Darlene? The totals I arrived at: 47 artifacts, 157 variants, 656 straight one-hit-wonders.
Due to quirks in my data sample, the distribution of one-hit names skews heavily toward the earliest years in the range, the 1880s-90s. The biggest reason is that far more names made the top 1000 in those years than any others. How can more than 1000 names rank in the top 1000? The answer is ties. For instance, in 1980 the top 1000 girls list actually numbered 1002 names, with Lashunda, Mariel and Rae tying at #1000. (147 babies bore each name.) But that's 1980. 1880 America was a smaller country, and babies born then only made it into our data if they survived long enough to get 20th-century Social Security Numbers. The smaller data set means a smaller range in popularity and more ties at the bottom. So the 1880 girls list features a whopping 1102 girls' names, with a 158-way tie at four babies apiece. I considered skipping the 1880s for this reason, but frankly the names of that time were too much fun to ignore.
And now for a few more names:
- Welcome, Constant, Bliss (all boys)
- Sweetie, Lovie, Doll (any guesses which are boys?)
- Icey, Nicy, Spicy, Vicy (girls; Dicy appears in multiple years' lists)
To be continued....
Comments
Thank you! I'm so excited about seeing all these names.
A colleague's father was named Welcome. He died two or three years ago and was probably born about 1910.
This going to be great, I can feel it in my bones. Welcome jumped off that list at me... have to think about it.
Thank you, thank you!
Lovie is a boys name, right? There's an NFL coach named Lovie Smith.
That's so sad...I wonder how many names were lost to the ages prior to Social Security?
I know two people named Bliss - a woman around 50 and a teenager.
Bliss reminds me of Miss Bliss (played by Hayley Mills) on early Saved by the Bell episodes. I like the sound but I think it's too feminine for boys and too... sexual for girls. It would be a good stripper or drag name. Haha...
I like Sable, probably because I also like Hazel, Mabel, etc... it means dark though right? I wonder if it was used by AFrican Americans, or Europeans with darker features? Or... if its meaning was ignored... it also seems unusual as dark is usually considered negative in western culture (ex. Snow White, black heart, white lie). I'm very curious about what is behind the use of this name.
Re: Icey, Spicy, Nicy, Vicy, Dicy: reminds me of the books Dicey's Song and Icy Sparks (neither of which I have read). Also reminds me of Niecy Nash (who hosts Clean House and is on Reno 911). Hers is a nn for Denise, leading me to think it's pronounced differently than the names in this list, but maybe I'm wrong to think these were all pronounced with the long I.
Dicey's Song is a fantastic book, though it's meant for older teens & was given to me in the 9th grade I occasionally reread it and the prequel Homecoming. Icy Sparks is just ok - awfully disease-of-the-month/Oprah-bookclubby.
The older Bliss is a conservative Christian and I believe her name is referring to religious Bliss. I barely know the younger girl.
The real reason I am posting again so soon is because I just came home from a parade and heard a brand new (using the term very lightly) name - Ashlette. New names are so exciting to me!!
Yeah, I think the religious Bliss that a lot of folks in the late 19th are named for is Philip Paul Bliss (1838-1876), a famous-at-the-time hymn writer who died young in a tragic trainwreck. Some of his songs were popular choices at Civil War commemorations, and thus especially beloved to the generation that remembered that first-hand.
http://www.pdmusic.org/bliss.html
Speaking of historical names, don't be too quick to dismiss the possibility of a girl named Melvin.... While many are statistical blips or misspellings of Melva, Melba, Malvina, some might have really been Melvins. There was a prominent American journalist who was Marvin Breckinridge Patterson (1905-2002):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Marvin_Breckinridge
Her parents named her Mary Marvin Breckinridge, but she was always called Marvin and that was her byline.
How do people find out about names that were around before the SSA data? For instance, _The Oxford Dictionary of First Names_ cites some centuries-old document in which a woman is referred to both as Amabilia and Mabilia, and a few threads ago someone talked about medieval variants of names--Annesta for Anastasia, Ellyn for Helen, etc.. I've been wondering where this sort of information comes from, and I would appreciate it if anyone would share anything they knew.
Thanks for an excellent post, Laura! Ooh, this is so exciting...can't wait for the follow-up post! (I'm still on tenterhooks for the continuation of "Where All the Boys End Up Nowadays" :).)
US manuscript census returns give first names for all enumerated persons starting in 1850. Or you can go to church baptismal records back into the 1600s, or abstracts of wills, or pretty much any sources that genealogists use.
The book Seventh Son by Orson Scott Card tells the story of a seventh son of a seventh son called Alvin (after his father). Alvin's brothers are called Vigor, David, Measure, Calm, twins Wastenot and Wantnot and little brother Calvin. Sound like they belong with the names "Welcome" and "Constant". The girl names were more familiar, like Eleanor. Maybe a future post could be about naming history, i.e. fictive names from historical or mythical past?
I love your blog! I find names fascinating, and I also love data, so...the perfect blend for me!
A friend of mine from high school named her son Worthy. Must be a family name.
In the little league near my house, there is a young player named Welcome Wilson, named after his grandfather, a prominent local citizen.
My maternal grandmother's name was Mary Doll. Her parents were going to name her Mary Ella, but then a visitor commented that she looked just like a little doll, so they decided on Mary Doll. I wonder if she is on the list you saw? (But you were probably just looking at first names.)
Where I live, unusual family names are quite commonly given to children these days, especially to boys, for some reason.
I could make a long list of unusual last-name-as-first-names or quirky family names, but that's probably for another post.
Well, I just can't resist, so here are some of the unusual names in my neighborhood (I also teach at the school, so I see/hear the names a lot):
Girls:
Mary Bass
Reagan
Berkeley
Teel
Smith
Mills Stuart
Braden
Griffith
Mary Mac (Mac a nn for Macsomething)
Story
Lady (nn for Adelaide)
Boys:
Hill
Wells
Lake
Cutter
Sage
Skylar
Scout
Buster (!)
Roscoe
In England at least, quite good parish records were often kept, going back into medieval times. And then there's the Domesday Book, which is stuffed full of demographic records. I can't look up its date because I haven't been able to get access to Google. (Is anyone else having trouble with Google?)
Re: girls named Melvin. If it's an error, it could easily be an error in recording the gender, rather than a misspelling.
Kelly--I wonder if Buster is my friend's grandson. That's his given name, not a nn. I don't know where they live, but I could find out.
Meg--The Domesday Book date is 1086. No problems w/ Google. Look carefully at your Google page. A friend had some problems w/ Google a while ago and didn't realize that the page had been hijacked by something called Goggle. It looked just like the multi-colored Google logo. You see what you expect to see!
I'm surprised to see Sable being a one-hit-wonder. My husband has a bunch of ancient relatives named Pinkney. I hope Pinkney's a one-hit-wonder. This is going to be fun!
My grandfather John's name was Buster on his birth certificate, but they later changed it.
This list seems really neat, I'm pretty surprised such a high percentage were authentic one hit wonders and not spelling variants.
Dolly Madison was such a prevalent figure, I'd bet Doll was a boy's name. Seems like it would've been used for girls more. Guess I'll go check.
Thanks Laura, for the grunt work!
Doll was a boy's name, but never a girl's name.
Pet was a one hit wonder for girls in 1880's. I checked it because there is a man somewhere on our family tree named Pet. Poor guy.
Sadhbh-- To get the medieval variant names you mentioned, and tons of others, do this:
Google: Medieval Names Archive
then, press: Medieval Naming Guides: English
then, press: Feminine Given Names in A Dictionary of
English Surnames by Talan Gwynek
go to the bottom of that page, and choose one of the time periods, e.g. "before 1250" or whatever, and it will pull up lots of medieval names, arranged alphabetically.
It's one of the great unsung sources of names, many of which would be viable today! Happy hunting...
Sable can mean dark but there is also an animal called the sable. Ermine are an animal too.They are similar to weasels and minks and and have beautiful fur that is used for coats etc. Maybe little Sable's and Ermine's parents were naming their kids after a luxury item like todays kids named Lexus or Evian.
Eo, I remember the medieval names from a mention in another post. There are definitely some interesting names there.
I'm most interested in what the highest-ranked one-hit wonder was. Bring them on!
I looked at the medieval names archive at the pre-1600 brass inscriptions section where I found this
"The ten most common names were shared by 82.5% of the male population." The ten most common John, Thomas, William, Richard, Robert, Henry, Nicholas, Edward, Walter, and Roger. Just think, more than 8 out of 10 men had one of those names. I'm betting that had a lot of nicknames.
I did a quick calculation from the Social Security website. In 1880 in the U.S., 41% of men shared the top ten names. In 2006, it's down to about 10%.
Amber: Do you think Pinkney is a surname? I'm asking because there is a town called Pinckney where I live and... I don't know, it seems like places and surnames often share names.
Mary: Good point about Ermine and Sable. That makes a lot of sense to me.
Actually Sable and Ermine remind me of the heraldic terms (another tinge of medievalness). Related to the Talan Gwynek stuff, there are also some fascinating articles about how certain names that we think of as historical are actually anachronistic:
http://medievalscotland.org/problem/
I have a teacher colleague whose name is Icy (and her DH's name is Rocky)! I saw on a class list that her full name is actually Isaline. Yikes! Anyone come across that name before? How do you think it is pronounced? IS-a-leen? IS-a-lyne? EYE-say-leen? (That last one sounds like contact lens fluid).
Pinkney is a surname. I have friends with that last name, and there were several prominent early Americans with the surname Pinkney or Pinckney (Charles Pinckney signed the US Constitution).
For all you who occasionally sing the praises of "older" names... Our friends had a baby this morning - Mabel Eileen. :) I used to think of Mabel as a bit daudy but after being in here for a while and now hearing it irl, it feels fresh, clean...
Irene's mom -- There's a character (boy) in Louisa May Alcott's book Little Men who's named Dolly -- it's a nickname for Adolphus, if I recall correctly.
Love this topic!
And now for my totally off topic question-what does everyone think of alliteration in names? I usually try to avoid them-they sound too comic book/cartoonish to me. But I recently find myself drawn to a boy's name that starts with the same letter as our last!
I discovered a one-hit wonder recently, when my friend Kenan asked if his name had ever hit the top 1000. It did, once, in 1997. I'm guessing it was due to the movie Good Burger, which came out that year and introduced Kenan Thompson (currently on Saturday Night Live) to the world.
I agree, Alissa, alliterative names do run the risk of sounding cartoonish. But they can also have a bit of stylish snap to them--I like the crisp "Tess Trueheart," maybe because the ONLY repeating sound is the T....T....t? Katie Couric pulls off the same pattern (K.....K...k). There's nothing comic-book about Margaret Mead, either.
So, I'd say it's something to think about, but not a deal breaker. It can work, with some care.
Eo and Meg--Thanks a lot! Can't wait to check those out!
Alissa--I think alliteration's okay, even pleasant, if the meter of the names doesn't make it sing-songy. Margaret Mead is okay, but Maria Mead, not so much.
Alissa, that was a decision we struggled with when we named our first -- our last name begins with M, but Margaret (nn Meg) was the name we liked the best. We decided to go for it, but we swore that any future children we would have wouldn't alliterate -- partially to avoid the "too-cute" problem, and partially because I'd babysat for alliterative families (for example, a family with a D last name who had four kids: Dalton, Dylan, Dawn, and Dustin) and it was hard to call the right name for the right kid!
Another naming no-no, in my opinion, are rhyming single syllable nn's for kids. My parents did that, though they claim they didn't realize it when they were naming me. I was J-Kim and my brother was K-Jim when my parents yelled at us.
Valerie: Yow, "Isaline" has got to be exceedingly rare. IZ-a-lyne or leen does seem the most palatable pronunciation. Your comment re contact lense solution-- hilarious!
One of the medieval names I like is "Ismay" (IZ-may) which is apparently a corruption or variant of Esme...
I wonder how unique the name "Aissa" is? I just encountered it reading Aissa Wayne's memoir of her father. (She's John Wayne's daughter). To me it has a current stylish sound, but they gave it to her in the late Fifties, obviously. Do you think it would be pronounced "Eye-EES-a"? Her younger sibs were John Ethan and Marisa...
The closest to Aissa I've seen is "Assia", the name of Assia Wevill, poet Ted Hughes doomed second wife. It's kind of an interesting one too, but perhaps too sullied by the role Assia Wevill played in breaking up Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath, and in later killing herself and her tiny daughter. What name could survive that kind of horror?
What is it about the name Mary that produces these two word names with weird middle names? I knew a Mary Lass. It was pretty, on her, but not everyone could have pulled it off.
Once I encountered a checkout person at the grocery store named Dymphna. I chuckled all the way back to the car.
And oh, kristin dawn, I am so glad you like new names because I tend to hate them, so it is good to see them from another side. Ashlette made me want to lie down with the smelling salts.
And from Kelly's list, Cutter, for a boy? Are his parents insane? Where I come from, a cutter is someone who, um ... well, remember Flatula Flumeflame or whatever that excellent handle was in previous comment threads? That kind of cutter.
Dymphna's a legendary Irish saint's name--in Gaelic, she's named Damhnait or Davets--she was supposedly buried near Gheel, Belgium, where there's a church in her honor. She's considered a patron saint for people with mental illness, incest survivors, epileptics, and runaways:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Dymphna
Oh yes, Dymphna, good Irish name, I believe! I met an Assumpta once, also Irish. Not too keen on the 'mph' or 'mpt' sounds in there. Ditto Humphrey.
Glad you enjoyed Isaline, Eo. Guess I'm waiting for ClevelandKentEvans to give me the lowdown on that one!
Kimberley--I agree about not linking rhyming names for kids (one syllable or more), but based on experience, I would say that parents in the throes of bawling out a child tend to mix up the names. I could never understand how my mother could yell "ArleneJoyceBernard" and then, sometimes for good measure add Helen (her sister...somehow her brother never got in there, now that I think about it), until the day I was yelling at one of my daughters and found myself calling her Joyce! I couldn't help it--I stopped in mid-tirade and started laughing. Having the names rhyme or alliterate (is that a verb?) probably makes it worse, but I'll bet most parents have had a similar experience...or if they haven't yet, they will!
Hehe, Arlene--I remember my grandmother starting with her own daughter and working through the granddaughters until she got to the right one....
Euclid, Pliny, Wealthy, Welcome, Constant, and probably Worthy wouldn't be "one-hit wonders" if we had data from before 1880 as part of the SSA list. All of them aren't that hard to find in records from the first half of the 19th century. The first two are "Classical Revival" names from the early 19th century period when towns were being named things like Corinth, Rome, and Athens. The others are survivals of Puritan names.
re: Ismay: This is how my friend from New Zealand pronounces his daughter's name (Esme). Very funny when he was trying to tell us her name.
re: Aissa: I would pronounce it EYE-sa I think. I wonder if it started as a misspelling of Alissa. I knew a guy, for example, whose name was Jasson and he claimed it was because his parents misspelled it on the birth certificate.
re: Assia: How would you pronounce this? I think it's ruined by having "ass" in it rather than the Plath connection, which I think is probably not very well known.
Did anyone else hear Laura on NPR this week talking names with Tom Ashbrook on "On Point"? I must say I felt like a bit of a Trendy Wendy when I knew ahead of time what the 'naming community' response would be to a particular name or trend! :)
I know a girl called Blyss, she's very serious and a good example of how a light name (even creatively spelled) doesn't have to box you in. I just met a two month old baby named June, so I am tipping this as the start of the mid century revival. Expect Baby Deborah, Valerie, Brenda and Kathleen to come your way soon!
Euclid, the mathematical one hit wonder, (Eulid was "The Father of Geometry") isn't a million miles removed from Linnaea, the feminine name derived from Carl Linnaeus, the taxonomist/botanist. Linnaea's pretty cool these days, although Euclid has a nasty "eww" sound at the beginning.
Laura re: your line ball calls, are you sure Constant isn't a porrly spelled Constance? Nicy, Dicey etc I would wager are the old-timey equivalent of parents naming their...
... kids Abby or Katie on the basis that "that's what we'll always call her", so no formal name is required. Nicy can be a nn for Denise, or Janice, Shanice.
I grew up with an alliterative name. Both first and last were long and I never minded it in the least.
Oh, and we've picked our name. Lois Barbara. Anything horrible we didn't think of?
Oh! I stand corrected on Dymphna.
This really belongs way back in the thread where someone asked for favorite full names from fiction/history, but: my new most deliciously quaint favorite name is Lodensy Butterfield. The mother of a famous spiritualist medium (bonus points if you can guess who) in the 19th century. Lodensy! Butterfield!
I think a child named Lois will get made fun of a lot. It's not really in the same league as Irene. Irene is old fashioned but its kinda cool and spunky and creative. You can imagine a beautiful woman named Irene. Lois is not only an old lady's name but it's also really dowdy and unattractive. I was born in the 80s and I think my name is totally cheesy but at least I fit in at school and still fit in with my peers. I always felt sorry for the Bernadette and the Louise in my elementary school because their names just sorta didn't fit at all, and they did get teased a lot. And there seems to be this weird psychological phenomenon that like when you hear a little girl who has a really out of style old ladies name you automatically think of somebody who is ugly or something. I like to call it the "Bertha" effect.
I think the last post was a bit harsh. Irene's mom, while I don't know that I would choose Lois for my child, I think that it's a pretty name. And Lois Lane is certainly a spunky, inspiring role model to give your daughter. (If you get over the fact that Superman often had to rescue her, she was tough, smart and hard-working, not a bad combination of traits.) And for the sake of continuity, it goes well with Irene, since they both have an early-to-mid-20th century vibe.
Also, considering that just a few posts ahead of you someone commented that they think mid-century names are on they way back in - if they're right, then little Lois Barbara will fit right in with all her peers.
Aside from that, the name doesn't present any obvious teasing nickname problems, as long as you don't call her Barbie.
That post about Lois is wrong.
Lois is just fine. I would rather be called Lois than some sort of cheesy fitting in name like Tiffany or Madison.
And every little Lois I know is called "Loey" (Rhymes with Chlöe or Zoey). Perfectly cute and common sounding.
And teasing doesn't have much to do with the kid's name. We talked about it before--if you're cute, rich, beautiful, or have a great personality you can pull off ANY name. Two of the head cheerleader types at my high school was named Berta and Martha. Both their names were kind of really ugh in the 90's, and if they were socially awkward they would have gotten teased. But they didn't.
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