Sometimes the weirdest names are older than we think. I had a boy in Cub Scouts a couple of years ago whose name was “Jett.” Dreadful, I thought, how could they ... but when I was doing a cemetery tour this fall, I saw a stone for a man whose first name was Jett, and he’d lived in the 19th century.
The same cemetery had a woman named “Adder Belle.” We looked for her sister, “Viper Sue,” but she wasn’t there ;-).
According to this,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madison_(name)
Madison as a given name has never been all that popular but was used as a given name for boys well before the 1984 movie Splash. Some examples are:
Madison Smartt Bell (1957/), novelist
Madison Cawein (1865/1914), poet
Madison Cooper (1894/1956), American businessman
Madison Jones (1925/), author
Madison S. Perry (1814/1865), fourth governor of Florida
And it was also used as a middle name, most often paired with James.
James Madison Carpenter (1888/1983), Methodist minister, scholar
James Madison DeWolf (1843/1876), surgeon
James Madison Wells (1808/1899), governor of Louisiana
Clarence Madison Dally (1865/1904), American glassblower
George Madison Adams (1837/1920), U.S. representative from Kentucky
As far as Madison as a girl’s name, yes that didn’t seem to become a popular name for girls until the 1984 movie “Splash” which was a modern retelling of the Hans Christian Andersen fairytale “The Little Mermaid”. I haven’t seen that movie for years but I don’t recall the character Madison as being particularly “slutty”. OK, she did come out of the ocean and walk around naked but that’s because she was a mermaid and rather innocent and naïve and evidently living under the sea as a mermaid, clothing was optional. Then there is the Disney movie version of The Little Mermaid” but unlike “Madison”, Ariel isn’t naked but wears strategically placed sea shells. :) ,