The boys’ names that ranked among the Top 1000 in 1880, the first year for which statistics were kept, include hundreds of choices no longer in use – or at least very rarely heard.  Some of the categories of lost names overlap with the now-obscure girls’ names, while others are different.

Nickname-names, for instance, so packed with lost names for girls, include some lost choices for boys, though more of the nickname names in use in the late 19^th century are still widely used today: Joe, Jack, Jake, Jim, and so on.

Those nickname names we’re not hearing much of any more but which were popular in 1880 include:

CHAS

CLEM

DELL

DOSS

DUFF

ELZIE

FRITZ

LAFE

LON

LUM

MART

MOSE

NEWT

ODIE

ROLLIE

SIM

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I was combing through the Top 1000 Names of 1880 the other day for another project (ah, the glamorous life of the baby name expert) and I was blown away by how many names on the list had been totally forgotten.  I don’t mean just marginalized, like Ethel or Beulah, but no longer even in our naming lexicon.

We tend to think of strange, invented, unique names as being a recent phenomenon, as if in the past everybody was named John and Mary, and it’s only since 1968 that we’ve had names like Hallie and Freedom.

But in fact, naming innovations have always been a part of American culture, and examining the list for 1880 – the first year for which we have records – makes that crystal clear.  The roster contains literally hundreds of names virtually unknown today.

Here, a two-part look at the lost names of 1880, starting with girls’ names.

The biggest name trend story of 1880 was nickname names – yes, dozens of the expected Minnie and Annies and Elsies (the name of the little girl in the Mary Cassatt painting that illustrates this post), but also dozen of names ending in –ie that have rarely been heard in the past hundred years.  There was a notable collection of boyish nickname names such as Donnie and Vinnie and Gussie, but here are the most outrageous overall:

ALCIE

ARRIE

AVIE

CORDIE

DESSIE

DILLIE

DOVIE

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Nameberry intern and guest blogger Danielle Miksza loves all things vampire, including the strange and wonderful world of vampire baby names.  She enlightens us on the options.

Vampires seem to be everywhere these days: in books and movies, on television and the internet, even occasionally living next door.  As a twenty year-old who believes Halloween should be declared a national holiday, I can’t help but be consumed by the vampire craze.

One reason for my vampire obsession is that they are portrayed as dark and lonely creatures nobody quite understands.  As an only child, I was often lonely growing up.  I did odd things such as talk to myself or giggle at absolutely nothing.  People were a bit unnerved by me and kept their distance.  So yes, when I read about a vampire feeling like an outcast from the rest of the world, I have an idea of what that feels like.

More reasons for my vampire fanaticism: I stay up all night; I hate the sunlight, and garlic does not agree with me. Who knows? I could be a bit of a vampire myself.

Once you look past the fangs and blood lust, vampires are actually quite attractive. Who could resist a guy with incredible strength, gorgeous eyes, pointy yet very white teeth, and a handsome name? Stephenie Meyer gave us girls one of the greatest gifts of all in her series Twilight: Edward Cullen. Just the thought of that immortal makes me light-headed. He’s rich. He’s gorgeous. And he’s telepathic. How often do you come across guys like that?

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Guest blogger and name lover Eleanor Nickerson, aka nameberry’s own Elea, tells us all about the exotic and gorgeous names from Cornwall, the exotic and gorgeous region in the southwest of England.

The first time I visited Cornwall was at the tender age of one. Sadly, my dad’s abiding memory of that holiday was a grouching baby grizzling all through his long-awaited sailing trip (something he has yet to fully forgive me for to this day). A few years later my parents bravely returned again, one more child in tow, and fortunately much fun and sandcastle-building ensued.

It wasn’t until several years later when I returned to the region as a fifteen year-old that I was truly able to appreciate the breath-taking beauty of the Cornish coast and countryside. In the intervening years since my last visit I had developed an avid, border-line obsessive, passion for names and their meanings. What struck me was that many houses were named instead of numbered, and these place names, along with those adorning road signs, quickly caught my attention both due to the foreign sound to English ears, and the similarity to my greatest name-love: Welsh names.

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Hope Edelman, today’s guest blogger, is the acclaimed author of the influential bestseller Motherless Daughters; her new book, a fascinating and inspirational personal odyssey titled The Possibility of Everything, is out this week.

 My daughter got her name from a San Francisco Guardian newspaper box.

Actually, she got her name from a prophetic graffiti artist who chose a Guardian newspaper box as his canvas. But I get ahead of myself.

It was September 1997, my eighth month of pregnancy, and my husband and I were taking our last pre-baby vacation. All the way up the California coast, we debated what to name our daughter.  She was to be named after my mother, Marcia, who’d died when I was seventeen. By Jewish tradition, this meant we needed a name starting with an M.  After several false starts we’d  narrowed the field to Maya— popular in my husband’s native Israeli culture–and Melanie, just because we liked it.

That evening, we checked into a hotel just outside Chinatown. As we were getting dressed for dinner, the debate continued.  Maya or Melanie? Melanie or Maya? The decision felt like a profound one, a label our unborn daughter would carry with her for life, and given that it was one of the very first choices we’d make for her as parents, we wanted to get this one right.

As circumstance would have it, we didn’t have to make the decision alone. When we stepped onto the sidewalk for dinner, we were greeted by spray-painted graffiti letters sprawled across a newsbox right in front of the hotel:  MAYA.  I stood there staring at the letters in disbelief. Even to a hardcore skeptic like me, it seemed like some kind of sign.

We named our daughter Maya Jill. Three years later, we took her on a journey to Central America to get rid of a troubling imaginary friend, a story I tell in my newest book, The Possibility of Everything. 

When one of my friends read an early draft of the book, he was concerned about my use of names. They were just “a little too precious,” he said.  “Maya was healed by a Maya healer, and your name is Hope? No one’s going to believe it.”

But what could I do? It’s a memoir. It would have been silly to create pseudonyms for my daughter and myself. So I left our names as they are.

Granted, it was confusing as a writer to have “Maya” describe both a child and a culture.  I had to do constant and fancy gymnastics to keep Maya’s name from appearing in the same sentence where “Maya” was also used as an adjective or proper noun (as in “Maya temples” or “the ancient Maya”).   (more…)