So it’s likely that he brought back the name Theophania, which then became Tephany, and then eventually Tiffany.
Tiffany is a very neon 80s name, and not without reason, it exploded in popularity during the decade. However, despite it’s modern sound, the name wasn’t born in the 80s. In fact, it 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, a historian and bishop in the Holy Land. He 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. 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. So it’s likely that he brought back the name Theophania, which then became Tephany, and then eventually Tiffany. But then, it exploded.
Despite not being able to prove the Tephany/Hugh connection 100%, it is possible that Grandpa Hugh encountered an Epiphany Tiffany and brought the name back to middle England, and the French Crusaders to France. This could explain why the name Tiffany in its modern form is near a millennia old, yet we do not think of it that way. It is likely due to a lack of famous Tiffany’s, with the most prominent being Theophanu, and Tiphanie Raguenel. 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. His son, Humphrey Tiffany, then took the name to America, and simultaneously removed it from England. Charles Lewis Tiffany eventually established a stationary and fancy goods emporium shop in 1837 which he named Tiffany, Young and Ellis, and later changed to Tiffany & Co. It was not until Truman Capote published his novella Breakfast at Tiffany’s in 1958, that the name Tiffany began to gain popularity, averaging under ten babies a year prior to this moment. The Novella Breakfast at Tiffany's starring Audrey Hepburn in 1961, turned her into a timeless Hollywood icon and quintupled the use of the name Tiffany. This set the base for an exponential explosion, with almost 10,000 Tiffanys a year by 1979. The invention of VHS in the late 70s, with Breakfast at Tiffany's being the first Audrey Hepburn movie released on VHS, further increased the popularity of the name. This resulted in the name being Top Twenty for nine out of ten years in the 80s. The name Tiffany has been popular since prehistory, and it is expected to carry on into the future.