Coined from Melbourne, Australia; popularized by opera singer Dame Nellie Melba.
Melba is a name that was quite literally invented by fame. Dame Nellie Melba — born Helen Porter Mitchell in Melbourne, Australia, in 1861 — took her stage name from her home city when she rose to become the most celebrated operatic soprano of the late Victorian and Edwardian eras. Her crystalline voice and extraordinary technique made her a global phenomenon, the kind of celebrity that the modern world would recognize instantly but which the 19th century had almost no framework for.
She performed at Covent Garden and the Metropolitan Opera for four decades, and her farewell concerts became a running joke — she gave at least seven of them. Melba's fame was so enormous that it generated eponyms. Auguste Escoffier, the legendary French chef, created Peach Melba in her honor at the Savoy Hotel around 1893 — sliced peaches, raspberry sauce, and vanilla ice cream.
Later, Melba toast, the thin crisp cracker, was also named for her, reportedly when she was on a reducing diet and the chef accidentally served her an over-toasted slice. It is rare for any person to have a dessert and a cracker named after them; it is rarer still for their given name to pass into general use as a result. The name Melba entered the American naming mainstream around the turn of the 20th century, riding the wave of the singer's fame, and remained in solid if not spectacular use through the mid-century. It now carries the patina of a grandmother's name — warm, musical, and distinctly period — though its connection to both Melbourne and one of history's great sopranos gives it a biography that most names can only envy.