💖 The History of The Tiffany 💖

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. 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. 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, whose 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 lots 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 the 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 stumble 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 cross 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. And going through the surviving records of Crusaders from the time there are candidate Hughs, and while I can't prove the Tephany/Hugh connection 100%, which kills me.

I'm still calling it that Grandpa Hugh on his travels came across an Epiphany Tiffany and brought the name back to middle England and the English language, as did also French Crusaders to France. It all fits! But it does leave the question, if Tiffany in its modern form is near a millennia old, why don't we think of it that way?

Probably just historical happenstance. A lack of famous Tiffanys. There were no queens born on the Epiphany to be named Tiffany, leaving Theophanu as the most prominent Tiffany, except not exactly a Tiffany, and Tiphanie Raguenel isn't particularly famous, until hopefully now that is.

If you go on your own French Tiffany Crusade, be sure to tell 'em Grey sent you. So, aside from these two, the name never landed on fame to pop in popularity like it would later, just sporadically showing up in written records in the late 17 and 1800s.

Which, as an alternate history side note, it does mean that at the time when Jane Austen was writing Emma, the name Tiffany was infrequently around with its exact modern spelling. So if the authoress was looking for an underused name with literary potential, she could have picked Tiffany and turned the Georgian and Victorian eras neon as well.

And, I mean, come on, the name Tiffany Woodhouse is tots perfect for the character. But sadly, it didn't happen, and Tiffany remained a name without fame. She would get there, but jumping backwards, she first she needed to transform.

In 1629, Tiffany does appear on an English census, finally this time, for the first time as a last name with one Mr. Henry Tiffany, who lived and died in Hackney London. Ok, so he wasn't born a Tiffany. Were you to track down his christening, you'd find he was Henry Tiffin at the time, but once grown up and married, the record now shows him as the first of the family of Tiffany.

Why the name change? It probably wasn't one. Consistent spelling in the English language totally wasn't a thing back then. None other than Tiffen/Tiffany's contemporary William Shakespeare never spelled his signature the same way twice.

English was [and still kind of is] very whatever with the written word. So Henry Tiffan became Tiffany randomly, and because the world is just too perfect sometimes, I'm also calling it that this Mr. Tiffany, the first to appear with the last name in English language, is directly responsible for this explosion of Tiffanys 400 years later.

Come with me. So Henry Tiffany had a son in 1630, Humphrey Tiffany, who moved to the shiny New England sometime before 1660. Humphry Tiffany took the name to America and simultaneously removed it from England as a last name as he was Henry Tiffany's only surviving son who would also have a son, James Tiffany in 1666.

From there, James Tiffany Jr., 1697 to Ebineezer Tiffany, 1734 to Comfort Tiffany, 1777 to 1812 Charles Lewis Tiffany. Which has caused some bulbs in the audience to light. But to follow through.

Charles Lewis Tiffany, with some friends, established a stationary and fancy goods emporium shop named Tiffany, Young and Ellis, in 1837. Charles Lewis Tiffany eventually took control of the company, changed the name to Tiffany & Co, to focus on jewelry exclusively, well except for that period during the Civil War when he switched to manufacturing swords as the Tiffany's Experience, but after that, back to jewelry.

From the late 1800s, this New York City store, for Tiffany was her most prominent placement since the Empress or the Astrologer, and it remained so until 1958 when Truman Capote walked by. The name caught the author's attention as underused with literary potential. And he wrote and published the Novella Breakfast at Tiffany's.

Prior to this moment, Tiffany as a first name was holding on, but barely, averaging under ten babies a year. After the Novella, there's a slight uptick in the name, but that could be a coincidence, but what definitely isn't is in 1961, the novella became a movie starring Audrey Hepburn, and it would not be 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 Tiffany's quintupled! Setting a solid base for an exponential explosion, and grew over the next twenty years as children grew, having seen the movie, to have children of their own.

Bringing us to 1979 and there are almost 10,000 Tiffany's a year. Now, 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 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 well, 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 total Tiffany's doubled.

Rolling into the 80s torrent of Tiffanies, where the name was Top Twenty for nine out of ten years. The Tiffany ascendancy that had started with Theophany, in prehistory. And that is the tale of Tiffany. She's carried her neon torch through the ages. And long may she carry it into the future.

To Tiffany.