National Jacqueline Day

The name is medieval, and its most famous early bearer inherited a war. Jacqueline, Countess of Hainaut, was proclaimed heir by her father, William, Count of Hainaut, Zeeland and Holland.

When he died in 1417, much of the nobility refused to accept a woman as ruler. Civil war with her uncle John followed. She fled to England, married Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, and was finally forced to abdicate to her cousin Philip in 1433.

English readers met her four centuries later, in Thomas Colley Grattan's popular 1831 novel about her life. Samuel Rogers had already published a poem called "Jacqueline" in 1814. The name reached America through fiction, not migration.

The slide reversed hard. Births nearly doubled in 1961. That jump of 5,329 is the largest one-year increase in the name's whole record.

Evans puts it plainly: "Jackie Kennedy's huge popularity skyrocketed the name." The count then fell for two years running. It came back to its best rank in 1964.

A second surge came much later, and Evans credits television for it. Jaclyn Smith played the First Lady in an October 1981 TV movie, and he ties a smaller but noticeable lift to her. The day honoring all of this is the one part of the story with a blank where its beginning should be.