Vintage baby names are having a moment right now, and it’s not hard to see why. Choosing a baby name can be a tricky task on top of all the other things you have to think about as impending parents, like packing a hospital bag or getting the nursery organized. Finding something that’s both timeless enough to take your newborn through to adulthood and unique enough to set them apart from all the other children in their class is a fine balance to strike.
That’s why many parents are turning to old fashioned names for inspiration. Rather than zoning in on the baby names that are topping the charts now, there’s a growing trend to take a look at what was popular this time last century and beyond.
There are plenty of vintage names that have already had their resurgence — the likes of Ava, Arthur, Evelyn, and Charles, for example, have risen back to the top of US and UK baby name lists over the past few years and show no signs of budging. But there are plenty of other old fashioned names that haven’t been dug out of the archives just yet, so we’re about to uncover some of them.
We combed through historical data — the Social Security Administration’s top 500 baby names in the US in 1920 and the Office for National Statistics’ top 100 baby names in the UK in 1924 — to find the names that were popular in the 1920s but that you rarely see now, around 100 years later. If you’re hoping to find a unique, vintage name for your baby boy or baby girl before everybody else discovers it, perhaps some of these suggestions might be just what you’re looking for .…
- Agnes
- Annie
- Alma
- Beatrice
- Bertha
- Bessie
- Betty
- Beulah
- Bridget
- Carrie
- Clara
- Constance
- Daphne
- Dora
- Dorothy
- Edith
- Edna
- Ellen
- Elsie
- Enid
- Ethel
- Freda
- Geneva
- Genevieve
- Henrietta
- Ida
- Iris
- Joan
- Josephine
- Leona
- Lillian
- Lucille
- Mabel
- Mae
- Martha
- Minnie
- Nellie
- Nora
- Norma
- Olive
- Opal
- Pearl
- Peggy
- Ruth
- Sylvia
- Virginia
- Vera
- Viola
- Vivian
- Winifred
- Albert
- Alfred
- Allen
- Alvin
- Arnold
- Bernard
- Cecil
- Chester
- Clarence
- Clifford
- Clyde
- Cyril
- Douglas
- Edgar
- Edmund
- Edwin
- Elmer
- Ernest
- Eugene
- Everett
- Francis
- Franklin
- Gilbert
- Gordon
- Harold
- Herbert
- Herman
- Horace
- Howard
- Hubert
- Ivan
- Ivor
- Kenneth
- Lawrence
- Leonard
- Lester
- Louis
- Maurice
- Percy
- Ralph
- Roland
- Sidney
- Stanley
- Vernon
- Victor
- Vincent
- Walter
- Wallace
- Wilbur
- Wilfred
None of the names listed above feature highly in the US and the UK’s most up-to-date “popular baby names” lists. This shows that there are a whole host of vintage baby names that haven’t been used widely for decades, but as the trend for old fashioned baby names continues, they may just be on the cusp of coming back again. So … are there any in there that could be perfect for your baby? If not, perhaps it’s worth taking a look through these lists of one-syllable baby names for boys, gender-neutral baby names, or uncommon baby names for girls.