Trending: ‘Murraya’

Lookups spiked 100,000% on July 8-9, 2021

Why are people looking up Murraya?

Murraya spiked in lookups on July 8th, 2021, after it was the winning word in the Scripps National Spelling Bee, spelled correctly by Zaila Avant-garde.

Louisiana teen Zaila Avant-garde correctly spells 'M-U-R-R-A-Y-A' to win Scripps National Spelling Bee
— (headline) ESPN, 8 Jul. 2021

Congratulations, Zaila!

What does Murraya mean?

We define Murraya as “a genus of tropical Asiatic and Australian trees (family Rutaceae) having pinnate leaves and flowers with imbricated petals.” The word comes from New Latin, and was named after Johan A. Murray, an 18th century Swedish botanist. There are a number of other words in English that have come from someone named Murray; most of these, however, are named after people whose first name was Murray (as in the Raney nickel, named after Murray Raney, or Barr body, after Murray Llewellyn Barr), and so the Murray connection is often hidden.

Trend Watch is a data-driven report on words people are looking up at much higher search rates than normal. While most trends can be traced back to the news or popular culture, our focus is on the lookup data rather than the events themselves.