He was one of the knights that liberated Jerusalem in 1099, and he brought back with him a relic, and a name.
Tiffany is a very neon 80s name, and not without reason - it exploded in popularity during the decade. But despite Tiffany’s modern sound, the name wasn’t born in the 80s. In fact, Tiffany is at least 80 decades old.
“OMG that’s like, positively medieval.” “How is that? And then why is this?”
Well, let me tell you the tale of tracking Tiffany through time. It starts in the year 300, with this guy, Eusebius. He was a historian and bishop in the Holy Land, who wrote a treatise On The Divine Manifestation, and the word for that in the Greek he wrote was Theophania. In ye olden days, religious virtue names were totally a thing, and Theophania became a name given to children born on the feast of The Epiphany. Though no five syllable name can go unnicked, so for some rhyming sage a Tiffany Epiphany was inevitable.
The name, thus born in the Holy Land, then spread with the Greek language. The most famous example appears in 972 with the Empress of the Holy Roman Empire, who’s name is written this way and probably pronounced tay-off-ahnu. Ancient pronunciation is… a whole other thing that we are going to skip (because it’s unknowable) and it doesn’t help that the Empress’s name is listed in different ways, so it’s impossible to know if she went by [Tay-off-ahnu or Theophania, or Tee-o-phania] which are all close to Tiffany, but not quite. Who knows. Maybe she shortened it and her title was [Tiff, Empress of the Empire. The top Tiff.] But that’s just speculation.
When this word first became a Tiffany name precursor isn’t exactly known. [Spoiler for History] Pre-printing press, there’s not a lot of written evidence, for anything and lot’s of documents that did exist got lost. So to tell the totality of the tale takes trusses of trust betwixt islands of evidence. It’s time to try to find the true old-time Tiffs.
By working backwards through hundreds of years of census books, and if you did that in English, you wouldn’t find much, thanks for nothing Doomsday Book. But if you also looked in French you could find Tiphaine Raguenel, born 1335, about whom all information is delightful. She was a noble lady astrologer who lived in France’s fairy tale castle Mont St Michael and used her astrological powers to predict the outcome of her husband’s knighting battles. [Hey honey, maybe don’t go to that one.] And she was righter than wronger because he survived to ascend to become the [Grand Constable of France, First Officer of the Crown.] On the island there’s still a little museum to her, and her husband. Though the one thing you won’t find in that museum is her skull, which was turned up just a few years ago in a reliquary box in town of Dinan with a note on it saying this is the skull of Tiphaine Raguenel and given anonymously to the local library. So, that’s a thing that happened.
Wait, why are we talking about this? Oh right, because this is oldest Tiffany, that’s pretty much spelled Tiffany, and about whom details of her life are known. But were you to keep going backwards through the census books you’d also strike a Trio of Tiffanies in Paris in 1313, but all that is known about them is their listed professions: wax maker, washer woman and spinster. A woman who spins wool into thread. Thus this foursome of French Tiffany’s written records are the proof that Tiffany is totally neon medieval.
Though you might be wondering exactly how did a Greek name from here, end up on a Fancy French Tiffany over here? ME TOO! So if you kept looking through every old document that might be a list of names for, hundreds of hours. If you were lucky you would eventually stubble on the Transcripts of Charters relating to Gilbertine Houses from 1161 containing a single Tiffany, well Tephany with an e p h, but that’s close enough to count, who lived in Fotherby, England. How did she get there? Well, we must across another Truss of Trust, but Tephany had a Grandfather named Hugh, who was at just the right time and place to travel to the Holy Land in the First Crusade. He was one of the knights that liberated Jerusalem in 1099, and he brought back with him a relic, and a name. But after the book and the 1961 movie, the name was suddenly everywhere.
While I can’t prove the Tephany/Hugh connection 100%, it is likely that Grandpa Hugh on his travels came across an Epiphany Tiffany and brought the name back to Middle England and France. This could explain why we don’t think of Tiffany in its modern form as being near a millennia old, as there were no famous Tiffany’s. Theophanu was the most prominent Tiffany, but Tiphanie Raguenel isn’t particularly famous until now.
In 1629, Tiffany appears on an English census for the first time as a last name with one Mr.Henry Tiffany, who lived and died in Hackney London. Henry Tiffin changed his name to Tiffany, and his son Humphrey Tiffany took the name to America. Charles Lewis Tiffany established a stationary and fancy goods emporium shop named Tiffany, Young and Ellis, in 1837. Charles Lewis Tiffany eventually changed the name to Tiffany & Co and focused on jewelry exclusively.
It wasn’t until Truman Capote wrote and published the Novella Breakfast at Tiffany’s in 1958 that the name Tiffany became popular. After the book and the 1961 movie, the name was suddenly everywhere, averaging over ten babies a year. After the Novella, there’s a slight uptick in the name, but that could be a coincidence. What definitely isn’t a coincidence is that in 1961, the novella became a movie starring Audrey Hepburn, and it would not be an understatement to say that this role turned her into a time-transcending Hollywood icon, forever connected with the name in the title. Tiffany had found her fame. And the following year, the number of babies given the name Tiffany quintupled, setting a solid base for an exponential explosion. This growth continued over the next twenty years, as children who had seen the movie grew up and had children of their own.
By 1979, there were almost 10,000 babies given the name Tiffany a year. We are still on a Truss of Trust for this Tiffany Theory - maybe it wasn’t the store, turned story, turned movie. It could have been a coincidence. If you look at enough random events, you can always draw some convincing correlations.
But remember, that in the ye olden days of the 60s and early 70s, movies could only be seen in theaters. But by the late 70s, there was a new invention - VHS, the video home system. So you could watch movies any time in glorious 480 pixels. And guess what?! Breakfast at Tiffany’s happens to be the first Audrey Hepburn movie released on VHS in, wait for it, 1979. And one year later, the total number of Tiffany’s doubled.
Rolling into the 80s, the torrent of Tiffanies continued, with the name being in the Top Twenty for nine out of ten years. The Tiffany ascendancy that had started with Theophany in prehistory was still going strong. And that is the tale of Tiffany. She has carried her neon torch through the ages, and may she carry it into the future - to Tiffany.