#Microblog Monday 450: Least Popular Names
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Mental Floss had a list of the least popular names — number 1000 on the SSA list — from 1880 to 1932. And while I think “Lockie” is ready to hit the top 100 list, it made me think about what it means to have a least popular name. Most of us are near the middle, and my name was #7 the year I was born. But Marlena was 989. And the most Marlenas there have ever been was in 1978 when it was #429. It’s a world of few Marlenas. What does it mean to move through the world as a Marlena? Not an unusual name for the place you live but an unusual name anywhere in the world?
You can put your name into the SSA site and see its popularity over time.
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5 comments
I like that site but I do feel I should point out that it’s only measuring the popularity of baby names in the US – it’s not a worldwide indicator. Both of my kids have classic names that have never been in the top 1,000 of the US (and probably not in Canada either), but if we lived across the pond they’d be much more common. My goal with both was to find a name that would guarantee they were the only one with that name in their class, but also a name that would be recognizable as one with a long history. Luckily the only two names Q and I ever agreed on fit those criteria!
My name is extremely uncommon everywhere, not surprised it is not on the list. Same with my kids, although one of their names is very slightly more common.
Ha, I have known at least one Marlena, that doesn’t strike me as *that* uncommon. And yes, tons of Melissas. And I am not surprised by the current top 10 (Olivia etc.) based on the names of kids we’ve known from our kids’ baby and me to school.
This is cool — thanks, Mel! (I’ve always been fascinated by names & naming trends!). I was born in 1961, when Lori was the 14th most popular name for girls. The top 5 girls’ names that year were Mary, Lisa, Susan, Linda and Karen. Lori peaked at #8 in 1963. It hasn’t ranked in the top 1000 since 2001, when it was 952nd.
As Turia said, I find it fascinating to see the most popular names in other countries. And here too. My name was in the top ten the year I was born. Sigh. And it’s barely in the top 1000 now. And I’ve never heard of half the names in the US list a century or so ago.
The girl’s name we had picked out was, I thought, not particularly common when we had hoped to use it. I was horrified to find that only a year or two later it was in NZ’s top five for several years running. But it doesn’t even feature in the top 50 in the last 20 years in the US list.
These days, it seems as if a lot of parents are going for unusual names, or at the very least, unusual spellings (poor kids) of more common names. As someone who has almost always had to repeat and spell my family name, I pity them.
My name enjoyed a surge in popularity during the 1970s and was in the top 100 until 2000…