I have been watching reruns of “Bewitched,” (the black and white ones) and it seems a running joke is the mispronouncing of Samantha’s name. Like when she learns to drive. Darren’s old girlfriends also louses the name up and says “I know it is something very unusual.” And there are a bunch of other times
Is this a joke just for the show or was Samantha an uncommon name back then. Also a running joke is Darrin calling his wife Sam and people not understanding Sam could be a woman. Of course the name is popular so while that might happen today if someone heard that today I pretty much assume they would guess Sam could be a woman.
According to IMDB, Bewitched premiered in 1964. According to the SSA’s cool baby name search doohikey, Samantha jumped from the 474th most popular baby’s name in 1964 to the 179th spot the next year. Overall its popularity has greatly increased in the ensuing decades, reaching fourth place in 1993 and staying there for three years. In 2005, it slipped to number 8.
Similarly, the name “Tabitha.” While it never reached the lofty popularity rankings of “Samantha,” it was basically unheard of until “Tabitha Stevens” was born.
I recently read that prior to the book Peter Pan, the name Wendy was rare and far between…only after the book became popular did the name become popular.
My aunt was born somewhere around 1910 and her middle name was Samantha. She was named after her grandmother’s aunt who was born in about 1830. For me, naturally, the name was associated with being an old timey country woman. Sometimes in the movies pioneer women were named that but called “Samanthee.”
I had no trouble adjusting to the newer associations and have come to like the name very much. It was known but not common before “Bewitched.”
You can also use the Name Voyager on the Baby Name Wizard web site (requires Java).
Select the “girls” box to reduce the names displayed, then go to the right (where there are more hits) and drag your cursor down until you encounter “Samantha.” Then Left Click. Samantha will be displayed in graphic form.
(The visual graphs do not appear to align perfectly with the dates at the bottom.)
The numbers they give are (Decade or year and rank):
1890s: 725
1900s: >1000
1910s - 1950s: does not appear
1960s: 273
1970s: 110
1980s: 26
1990s: 4
2003: 10
2004: 9
2005: 8
I suspect that the Bewitched writers deliberately picked “old sounding” names (Samantha, Tabitha) to indicate that the witch tradition goes back in time, inadvertantly resurrecting the Samantha for a fresh era. (Tabitha does not seem to have gotten the same pull, and Endora–taken from the biblical Witch of Endor and being the villain of the piece–got no traction, at all.)