Breakfast at Epiphany's

A famous movie starring Audrey Hepburn. 

Stained glass lamps. 

A zillion little girls born in the eighties.

What do they all have to do with the glum looking gentlemen in the picture?

Today is the feast of the Epiphany, when the three wise men (or Magi) brought gifts to the baby Jesus. The word "epiphany" comes from two Greek words, epi ("to") and phainein ("show"), the idea being that with the visit of the wise men, Christ's divinity was being revealed or manifested to the greater world of the Gentiles (beyond the shepherds abiding in the fields). 

But in the Middle Ages, there was also another word for the feast day, which combined  phainein with the Greek word meaning "God": theos. Theophaneia meant "the showing of a God". In Old French, this got corrupted to "Tiphanie", and baby girls born on or near this feast day in the Middle Ages were often christened with this name.

Some people ended up with it as their surname, like the famous American jewellers and stained glass artists of the Tiffany family to whom we owe beautiful lamps such as this one:

Tiffany lamp

But with the rise of Protestantism, it was no longer popular to name children after the feast days of the Catholic Church. Tiffany fell out of favour for centuries as a first name. Its resurgence in recent years is due to the immense popularity of the 1961 film Breakfast at Tiffany's (and doubtless the doomed hope on the part of parents that their baby would grow up to be as beautiful and glamorous as its star, Audrey Hepburn). 

When I used the term "zillion" above, I was speaking scientifically, as you can see from this listing on the US Social Security Administration's cool website about baby names, with "Tiffany" pretty firmly in the top twenty from 1980 to 1989.  Significantly, it wasn't even in the top 1000 before 1962. But poor Tiffany. Looks like she's in freefall, beaten out by Isabella, Emma, Olivia, Sophia, and Ava and so many others.

Popularity of a  Name

Popularity of the female name Tiffany Year of birth Rank 2010 311 2009 281 2008 250 2007 211 2006 210 2005 196 2004 175 2003 148 2002 140 2001 127 2000 101 1999 80 1998 67 1997 61 1996 52 1995 46 1994 35 1993 33 1992 32 1991 27 1990 23 1989 16 1988 13 1987 18 1986 17 1985 23 1984 14 1983 14 1982 13 1981 14 1980 14 1979 28 1978 32 1977 34 1976 32 1975 37 1974 41 1973 52 1972 61 1971 62 1970 99 1969 143 1968 178 1967 192 1966 242 1965 389 1964 461 1963 696 1962 784 Note: Rank 1 is the most popular, rank 2 is the next most popular, and so forth. Data are not shown for some of the years you specified because the name Tiffany was not in the top 1000 names for those years. Name data are from Social Security card applications for births that occurred in the United States.

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