<p>Susan is also a generational name. In elementary school through college I always had a minimum of 3 other Susans in each of my classes. I remember one class in college with 25 students and 5 of us were named Susan. Now, you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone in an entire school with the name!</p>
<p>You can obtain data on the popularity of baby names in the U.S. in chart form at
[Baby</a> Name Popularity by Year](<a href=“http://www.utahbabyfair.com/baby_guide/baby_name_year_count.aspx]Baby”>Baby Name Popularity by Year)
This is not limited to names given in Utah! There is another site with the same data, but I’ve lost track of it. Maybe Puzzled88’s link? But that is crashing Firefox for me also.
(Not quite sure why, will try it again later.)</p>
<p>Incidentally, the data on the Utah site are not right for very rare names. I searched for a name that at least two living people have (on the birth certificate), and it’s not on there at all. It is probably limited to some number of the most common names (on the order of 5,000 or 10,000).</p>
<p>So, for instance, if you search for “Barack,” you will find no one born in the U.S. with that name. But the other name I searched for didn’t turn up either, and there’s no political issue about it!</p>
<p>(Sorry about broadening the topic to men’s names. I think they may show less exaggerated popularity swings. But there are definitely some names that rise and fall in popularity for boys, also.)</p>
<p>We have a “worst name ever” in the grandparents. How would you like to be named “Beulah”? :eek:</p>
<p>Well, “Beulah” is Biblical, meaning “married.” You can find it in Isaiah 4:62 (in Hebrew). It might have been worse. From the same verse of Isaiah, the great-grandparents might have chosen the name meaning “My delight is in her” . . . Hephzibah.</p>
<p>(With sincere apologies to any “Hephzibah”'s out there–the meaning of the name is beautiful.)</p>
<p>My Grandmother loathed her name - Jewel - and told her sons not to name anyone after her. So they gave me her maiden name as a middle name instead.</p>
<p>My name and my husband’s name peaked in the 1950s and neither are particularly popular now. My older son’s name peaked in the early 1980s and remains very popular. I feel bad about that. My younger son has a very common name, that peaked in the 1960s but isn’t at very popular at all now. There’s always been at least one other one in his grade.</p>
<p>The link works fine for me, I’ve used it before and love it. I’ve had it act funky in the past though.</p>
<p>Oddly enough, many Asian girls among my sons’ classmates had names I would consider dated:</p>
<p>Edna
Daphne
Alice
Agnes</p>
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<p>They will be in a few years thanks to the Twilight series. There may be a bunch of Bellas, and Harrys and Hermiones, too.</p>
<p>Starbright: One of my best friends has a very common last name, and wanted to give her children uncommon first names. About 18 years ago she named her daughter Emily. Boy did that backfire on her. </p>
<p>Another friend named her daughter Olivia, and I remember thinking at the time it was a rare name. Now I know a whole bunch of young Olivias.</p>
<p>My dad’s parents’ names were Otis and Sadie. At least Sadie is coming back into style! My mom’s name is Maxine. She’s still mad at her parents for naming her that.</p>
<p>My mom’s sisters were Edna and Selma. Her friends included Thelma and Ethel. I don’t see any of those reviving any time soon.</p>
<p>Quite a few of my peers were named Barbara, Nancy, Sharon, Denise, Susan or Linda. I wonder how they got to be so popular.</p>
<p>The “creative” spellings make me crazy. I remember my daughter telling me that her middle school teacher had named his new baby girl “Giselle”. I thought it was a lovely ballet-inspired choice till I learned he had spelled it “Jizelle”. Then there’s the recently departed Project Runway contestant “Qrystal”. I just don’t see the point. I guess some parents just feel their very special snowflakes can’t possibly go through life with the exact same name as any other snowflake.</p>
<p>We named our D a name that apparently had its heyday in the 40’s, according to that link. With the craze for old fashioned names, I’m surprised it’s not common at all now, although it isn’t an unusual name. And there is even an ode to the name by a famous poet.</p>
<p>On the subject of the names of my generation, I always hated the nicknames and abbreviations: Nan, for Nancy, Bobbie for Barbara, Sue for Susan, Peggy for Margaret, etc. The men’s names bother me too. Michael, Peter, David are so much nicer than Mike, Pete, and Dave. Peter is another name you don’t see much of anymore.</p>
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<p>So true. I think Bella/Isabella is a beautiful name, but I wouldn’t want to name my kids that anymore for fear of people thinking along those lines.</p>
<p>I will name my future cat Bella.</p>
<p>One of my friends just had a baby girl and , wanting an unusual name, calleded her Isabella. They had NO idea how popular the name is currently. I have a granddaughter Ava. Same thing with HER parents but 3 of my friends also have granddaughters named Ava.</p>
<p>^^My grandmothers were named Elsie and Mary, great grandmothers were Selma, Mary Catherine, Mary and Mary Ann! I am the only woman of my generation in my family not to have the middle name Marie. Every cousin, my mother, sister in law and an inlaw aunt.</p>
<p>I named my son an unusual name, practically unheard of when I was growing up, in the low 200’s in popularity when he was born in the 80s. Well… it caught on… it has now been on the top 5 list of top choices for the past 5 years. It was a nice name… but its kind of ruined now. I mean… how would you feel if you were 20-something and kept hearing little kids called by your name? He still seems to like his name ok… but I’m sorry I now that I was such an unwitting trend setter.</p>
<p>Similar issue with my own name. Very rare for my generation - but it suddenly got popular about 6 years ago, and has been within the top 8 spots for baby names ever since.</p>
<p>My husband and I both have very common names from the mid-1950’s so we really wanted something different for our daughter, not weird or funny spelling, but classic. We succeeded! If I meet anyone with her name, it’s usually someone my age or older. The best part is that she likes it too. </p>
<p>MOWC, you mentioned Edward. That is THE name for guys in both my husband’s and my families. It’s in my fathers name, my FIL, my husband and one of my boys, but as a first name for just one.</p>
<p>I’m also not a fan of unisex names or weird spellings. From my screen name, you can see what my folks did to me and all my life, I’ve had to spell out a simple name because of the weird ending. About ten years ago, I gave up correcting people and just let them spell it however they wanted or just used the formal variation.</p>
<p>I must point out that I had a grandmother Fanny, a great aunt Malvine (known as “Aunt Weenie”) and my mother’s good friend known as “Aunt Sissy.”</p>
<p>You should have seen my sons rolling on the floor laughing to discover they had relatives named Fanny, Weenie, and Sissy.</p>
<p>My grandmother was named Mildred, but everyone called her “Millie”. I actually like the name “Millie”, but would never saddle my daughter with “Mildred” so that name stays in the “past generation” catagory in our family. We also had an Aunt Gert, Aunt Ruth, Aunt Marion, Aunt Marie, Aunt Esther, etc. On the men’s side we had Delbert, Chester, Truman, Harold, Frank, Theodore, and Cornell. Maybe its the history buff in me, but I like many of those turn-of-the-century names. (Okay, some are real stinkers, but some are really nice-sounding. Come on, how can you not like a guy named “Chet”?) Virginia is another of those names that has lost favor, but I think it is a beautiful name.</p>