Florida

Where Florida comes from

Florida hasn't made it into the dictionaries we draw on, and nobody well known enough for an encyclopedia has carried it yet — so for now its story is the one the SSA record tells. Names that spell a familiar sound a new way often live here for a while before anyone writes them down.

  • Vowel-ended
Along the way
  1. 1685
    Florida Cevoli born
    18th-century Italian Catholic abbess
  2. 1880
    First SSA year
    Already #547 among girls — 10 babies in the first year on record.
  3. 1888
    Peak, #380
    40 babies named Florida — more than any year before or since.
  4. 1909
    Florida Friebus born
    actress, screenwriter
  5. 1953
    The fade
    The first year with half the peak's births — down to #2,699.
In the dictionary

No dictionary entry for this spelling — which is its own kind of rare.

Namesakes
  • Florida Cevoli · 18th-century Italian Catholic abbess, 1685–1767
  • Florida Friebus · actress, screenwriter, 1909–1988
  • Florida Ruffin Ridley · American civil rights activist, teacher, editor and writer, 1861–1943
  • Florida Chanturiya · Russian singer, born 1990

Sources: the origin note and dictionary entry are quoted from Wiktionary (CC BY-SA 4.0); the namesakes come from Wikidata (CC0); the milestones are worked out from the SSA record.