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ArchivesMy column on Darren -- and some extra information on what I found about the history of Darren during my research
Here is the link to today's column:
https://omaha.com/lifestyles/cleveland-evans-darren-has-a-steadfast-legacy-of-popularity/article_f9c4dec8-e9cf-11ed-b0e4-5b9e7e95515f.html
As the entry for Darren on this site points out, this is a given name whose origin is obscure. I was glad to be able to do research in census and other records on Ancestry.com to find out more about it.
As usual one cannot just look at the lists of names that come up when you search the Index of the censuses on Ancestry to find the origin of a name. Census takers were not chosen for their penmanship or spelling ability, and it is often really hard to read the original record. The persons who indexed them did this quickly and often assimilated what they read to modern names they were familiar with, but when one goes back and checks the photocopy of the original record (luckily usually available) and pays close attention to how the particular census taker wrote certain letters in cursive, you often find they got it wrong.
I have looked at all the examples of Daren and Darren as given names in the Index for censuses before 1880 and have not found a single one that looks like it's really Darren to me. They all turn out to really be Warren, Darius, Orrin, Duren, etc. As the people at Ancestry.com develop more links to other records that probably refer to the same person on their pages, this has provided more evidence of what the real name of the person was and has made it clear that I am almost always right when I think the indexer got the name wrong. :)
As the newspaper column states, though Darren and Darrin do occur as very rare surnames in the USA in the 19th century, with the former being from Ireland and the latter an alternative version of Darwin that developed in upstate New York, they are both extremely rare, and I found no evidence that the given name was originally adopted from either of them.
Though more research needs to be done on this, at this time it does look like to me that the spelling Daren was the original one for the given name, and that this first became regularly used because of the character Daren Lane in Zane Grey's 1922 novel "The Day of the Beast". Middle names are rarely written out in the census, so it is really significant that in the 1930, 1940, and 1950 censuses I found 10 different examples of "Daren Lane" given as first and middle name for a man or boy -- and these were ten different people, with them being just Daren or Daren L. in other censuses. So even though this was not one of Grey's more popular novels (being one of the few he published that was NOT a "western"), it really does seem that Daren was established by his book.
The caveat to this is that there is at least one example in the census of a Daren born well before Grey wrote his novel. There was a man named Daren Pearce who was born on March 18, 1887 and died on February 19, 1972. Here is a link to his gravestone on Find A Grave:
https://www.ancestrylibrary.com/discoveryui-content/view/136786597:60525
Daren Pearce seems to have lived his entire life in White County, Illinois, a rural area in the southern part of that state. We know from the census he had only an 8th grade education, and in the 1940 and 1950 censuses his occupation is given as "janitor at a school" and "gatekeeper at a foundry", respectively. It would seem incredible if Zane Grey (or Darren McGavin) had ever met him or heard of him.
I don't think we can say that a single solitary example like this is the "origin" of a given name frequently used in later times. I think you have to have evidence that later parents were inspired by an original name bearer to say that etymologically it's the origin of the modern name. So I don't think Daren Pearce's parents should be credited with being the originators of the modern names Daren and Darren (unless some surprising futher evidence is discovered.)
How did Daren Pearce's parents William and Martha come up with his name? There is no telling, though one possibility is that it is a deliberate or accidental alteration of the place name Darien. Darien is the easternmost province of Panama, and before the Panama Canal was dug it was common to call the Isthmus of Panama the Isthmus of Darien. The town of Darien, Connecticut was given the name in 1820 after the place in Panama when it was formally incorporated. And though the great majority of the references to Daren Pearce spell his name that way, the 1910 census taker did write his name as "Darien."
Zane Grey may have created the name from Darien, though I think if he invented it himself he's likely to have based it on the word "daring". As the column points out, Daren is often addressed as "Dare" in the story by his friends.
The first time there are more than five boys with the spelling Darren in the Social Security records is 1936. So the actor Darren McGavin, who probably invented his stage name some time in the late 1940s, wasn't the first one to put two r's into the name. However, before he became famous in the early 1950s the more common spelling was Daren. The fact that Darren has been by far the most common spelling of the given name ever since then is obviously due to McGavin's fame.
Unfortunately, at this point we really don't know for sure how Zane Grey chose Daren as the name for his character, or how and why William Lyle Richardson chose "Darren McGavin" as his stage name when he became an actor. But it certainly seems to me that at this point the evidence is that Zane Grey popularized Daren from his fictional character, and Darren McGavin later popularized the spelling Darren.
A final note: when I saw that 1932 was the first time there were five or more Darens in the Social Security records, I Googled "Daren 1932". What immediately came up were two different obituraries for men with the first name Daren who were both born to LDS (Mormon) families in southern Idaho in 1932. So Daren turns out to be another example of Latter Day Saints picking up quicker on a name introduced in the popular culture than other groups.
https://omaha.com/lifestyles/cleveland-evans-darren-has-a-steadfast-legacy-of-popularity/article_f9c4dec8-e9cf-11ed-b0e4-5b9e7e95515f.html
As the entry for Darren on this site points out, this is a given name whose origin is obscure. I was glad to be able to do research in census and other records on Ancestry.com to find out more about it.
As usual one cannot just look at the lists of names that come up when you search the Index of the censuses on Ancestry to find the origin of a name. Census takers were not chosen for their penmanship or spelling ability, and it is often really hard to read the original record. The persons who indexed them did this quickly and often assimilated what they read to modern names they were familiar with, but when one goes back and checks the photocopy of the original record (luckily usually available) and pays close attention to how the particular census taker wrote certain letters in cursive, you often find they got it wrong.
I have looked at all the examples of Daren and Darren as given names in the Index for censuses before 1880 and have not found a single one that looks like it's really Darren to me. They all turn out to really be Warren, Darius, Orrin, Duren, etc. As the people at Ancestry.com develop more links to other records that probably refer to the same person on their pages, this has provided more evidence of what the real name of the person was and has made it clear that I am almost always right when I think the indexer got the name wrong. :)
As the newspaper column states, though Darren and Darrin do occur as very rare surnames in the USA in the 19th century, with the former being from Ireland and the latter an alternative version of Darwin that developed in upstate New York, they are both extremely rare, and I found no evidence that the given name was originally adopted from either of them.
Though more research needs to be done on this, at this time it does look like to me that the spelling Daren was the original one for the given name, and that this first became regularly used because of the character Daren Lane in Zane Grey's 1922 novel "The Day of the Beast". Middle names are rarely written out in the census, so it is really significant that in the 1930, 1940, and 1950 censuses I found 10 different examples of "Daren Lane" given as first and middle name for a man or boy -- and these were ten different people, with them being just Daren or Daren L. in other censuses. So even though this was not one of Grey's more popular novels (being one of the few he published that was NOT a "western"), it really does seem that Daren was established by his book.
The caveat to this is that there is at least one example in the census of a Daren born well before Grey wrote his novel. There was a man named Daren Pearce who was born on March 18, 1887 and died on February 19, 1972. Here is a link to his gravestone on Find A Grave:
https://www.ancestrylibrary.com/discoveryui-content/view/136786597:60525
Daren Pearce seems to have lived his entire life in White County, Illinois, a rural area in the southern part of that state. We know from the census he had only an 8th grade education, and in the 1940 and 1950 censuses his occupation is given as "janitor at a school" and "gatekeeper at a foundry", respectively. It would seem incredible if Zane Grey (or Darren McGavin) had ever met him or heard of him.
I don't think we can say that a single solitary example like this is the "origin" of a given name frequently used in later times. I think you have to have evidence that later parents were inspired by an original name bearer to say that etymologically it's the origin of the modern name. So I don't think Daren Pearce's parents should be credited with being the originators of the modern names Daren and Darren (unless some surprising futher evidence is discovered.)
How did Daren Pearce's parents William and Martha come up with his name? There is no telling, though one possibility is that it is a deliberate or accidental alteration of the place name Darien. Darien is the easternmost province of Panama, and before the Panama Canal was dug it was common to call the Isthmus of Panama the Isthmus of Darien. The town of Darien, Connecticut was given the name in 1820 after the place in Panama when it was formally incorporated. And though the great majority of the references to Daren Pearce spell his name that way, the 1910 census taker did write his name as "Darien."
Zane Grey may have created the name from Darien, though I think if he invented it himself he's likely to have based it on the word "daring". As the column points out, Daren is often addressed as "Dare" in the story by his friends.
The first time there are more than five boys with the spelling Darren in the Social Security records is 1936. So the actor Darren McGavin, who probably invented his stage name some time in the late 1940s, wasn't the first one to put two r's into the name. However, before he became famous in the early 1950s the more common spelling was Daren. The fact that Darren has been by far the most common spelling of the given name ever since then is obviously due to McGavin's fame.
Unfortunately, at this point we really don't know for sure how Zane Grey chose Daren as the name for his character, or how and why William Lyle Richardson chose "Darren McGavin" as his stage name when he became an actor. But it certainly seems to me that at this point the evidence is that Zane Grey popularized Daren from his fictional character, and Darren McGavin later popularized the spelling Darren.
A final note: when I saw that 1932 was the first time there were five or more Darens in the Social Security records, I Googled "Daren 1932". What immediately came up were two different obituraries for men with the first name Daren who were both born to LDS (Mormon) families in southern Idaho in 1932. So Daren turns out to be another example of Latter Day Saints picking up quicker on a name introduced in the popular culture than other groups.
This message was edited 5/7/2023, 12:11 PM
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Replies
Very interesting! I see there was a little bump in the SSA records for Daren in 1922. I'll update some of the information here based on this.
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