As if becoming a parent wasn’t already stressful enough in general, having to pick the name your baby will be known by for the rest of their lives can feel like an overwhelming responsibility.
Each year, the Social Security Administration releases a list of the most popular baby names to inspire parents as they think of their own. (Olivia and Liam have actually topped the list for seven years in a row now.) People don’t really pay as much attention to the names that are losing popularity, but it’s entirely possible that a name could be used so rarely that it just disappears.
There are several once-popular baby names that are now used so infrequently they could become extinct.
Choice Mutual, an insurance agency for seniors, studied the opposite end of the Social Security Administration’s data and found that some names barely show up on birth certificates these days. While we all probably know some people with these names, chances are they probably aren’t members of Gen Alpha.
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The boy names that face the highest risk of extinction are Gary, Larry, Randy, Terry, and Todd. For girls, it’s Patricia, Debra, Susan, Shirley, and Karen. Interestingly, looking at how often all the names were used without separating them by gender, the top five fastest declining names were all girls’ names.
Choice Mutual also examined names by the decade they were the most popular in and found that names from the 1930s are the most likely to go extinct. Frequently used names in that decade included Betty, Billy, Dolores, Donald, Joan, Joe, Norma, and Shirley.
Some older names are sticking around as parents use them to honor their family members.
As an insurance company that works mainly with seniors, Choice Mutual noted they’ve seen plenty of names come back into style as parents have attempted to honor older family members by passing their names down. Research shows that 27% of Americans got their first name from a family member, while 43% got their middle name from a relative.
This trend seems to be particularly popular with girls’ names, with the most common being Hazel, Eleanor, Elsie, June, and Rosalie. Boys’ names like Harvey and Archie made the list, too.
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Giving your baby the same name as one of their relatives is a really sweet way to show that person how much they mean to you and to keep their memory alive after they pass away, but it can be tricky. Some family members might end up feeling left out, or siblings might grow resentful because they think one of them has a more special name than the others.
Passing down a name can be a nice gesture, but it’s also important to make sure it’s not going to cause any unnecessary drama and to do it because you truly want to, not because you feel pressured to do so.
There are a lot of factors that go into creating baby name trends.
It’s not really surprising that parents tend to use names they hear all the time as inspiration, as a paper published by JSTOR explained. For example, songs like “Brandy (You’re A Fine Girl)” have caused certain names to surge in popularity.
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Babies born during the American Revolution were often named after important figures in the fight for independence. Politics still holds a lot of sway today, as evidenced by Reagan going from hardly ever being used as a first name to being commonplace after Ronald Reagan’s presidency. Some parents have even given their babies the same names as hurricanes.
We are definitely living in the era of everything old becoming new again, though, so it’s difficult to say whether any of these names will really disappear completely, or if there will be lots of little Garys and Patricias in a few years. Some people choose baby names specifically because they sound vintage, so it’s hard to know if any names will truly become extinct.
Mary-Faith Martinez is a writer with a bachelor’s degree in English and Journalism who covers news, psychology, lifestyle, and human interest topics.
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