Times are changing, and with them, names are rapidly changing too. No, we don’t mean that people change the names under which they came into this world - it’s just that the fashion for baby names changes almost faster than the fashion for clothes, hairstyles or accessories.
It would seem that just yesterday some name was incredibly popular among parents-to-be - and now, at first it falls out of the top ten, and over time it completely disappears into history. The BabyCenter community traditionally collects data on the most popular baby names at the end of the year - and now we bring to your attention a selection of names that in 2024 may even be ‘in danger of extinction.’
More info: BabyCenter
Image credits: Vika Glitter (not the actual photo)
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Of course, BabyCenter isn’t an official institution, but the history of this community goes back to 1997, so the statistical collections they publish look quite reliable. So, according to the study's authors, female names that were popular among millennials, especially Amanda, Angela, Brooke, Diana, and Michelle, are gradually going out of fashion.
As for names for boys, names ending in -aden, which were so common throughout the 2000s, are now in big decline: Aiden, Raiden, Jaiden. And finally, names formed on the basis of last names, and suitable for both girls and boys, like Baylor, Bradley, Brady, Clayton, Hendrix, Preston, Reid, McKenzie, Raegan and Sawyer are also out of favor among newly minted parents.
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However, there is no stability and never has been in the matter of picking names for kids. Why go far for examples? This year, the four quarterbacks who led their teams to the NFL conference finals are Lamar, Patrick, Brock and Coleridge (yes, CJ Stroud's official full name is Coleridge Bernard), twenty years ago it was Tom, Ben, Michael and Donovan, thirty years ago: Steve, Troy, Neil and Stan.
Accordingly, forty years ago it was Joe, Dan, Jim and Mark, and half a century ago: Terry, Fran, Daryl and James. As we can see, not a single repetition (although if I took a step of ten years, the name Tom would be repeated more than once...) - and even this random statistical experiment shows that fashion for names just comes and goes.
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Another example, this time a very personal one - one of my 10 Y.O. twin daughters is named Eva, and according to the statistics that my wife and I had, in 2014, it was not a very common name. At least that's what we thought... As Thorin Oakenshield once said, "I've never been so wrong in all my life!" Now my daughter has two Evas in her class, another one is a neighbor’s daughter, about the same age, and at least three of our acquaintances also have Evas, a little younger than my daughter. As we can see, statistics can also mislead us heavily...
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Be that as it may, you will probably be interested in reading or just scrolling this list - especially if you have children yourself, or are planning to become parents in the near future. Who knows, maybe you will like one of the names from this selection so much that you will pick it for your kid-to-be and, who knows, set a reverse trend towards a return to popularity? After all, history, as we have already said, often moves in a spiral...
