Vintage Baby Names: Testing the 100-year rule
In our first book on baby names Beyond Jennifer & Jason, we created something called The Hundred Year Rule, which holds that it takes a full century for a name to shake off its dusty image and sound fresh again.
When we look at the popularity lists for a hundred years ago — 1925 — we see any number of vintage baby names that have already popped back, names like Violet, Sadie, Ruby, Isabel, Max, Oliver and Felix.
The question is, are there any names from a century ago that we’ve overlooked and are still worthy of re-evaluation? Here are some you might consider from the popularity list of 1925 — although we do have to keep in mind that the US population then was about 30% of what it is now, so some of these names were attached to a very small number of babies.
- Adelia
- Agnes
- Aili
- Albertine
- Amalia
- Antonia
- Ara
- Avis
- Bernadine
- Bethel
- Betty
- Celestine
- Coletta
- Cordelia
- Delphine
- Delta
- Dorothea
- Easter
- Erie
- Florrie
- Frances
- Geneva
- Hattie
- Ida
- Inez
- Kitty
- Lelia
- Lois
- Lottie
- Lucretia
- Lula
- Mamie
- Marian
- Marjorie
- Minerva
- Nella
- Nova
- Octavia
- Odessa
- Opal
- Ophelia
- Ouida
- Palma
- Pauline
- Polly
- Roxie
- Theodora
- Thora
- Tillie
- Verona
- Veva
- Viola
- Winifred
- Winnie
- Zadie
- Abner
- Albert
- Alfred
- Ambrose
- Archibald
- Augustine
- Basil
- Benedict
- Calvin
- Casper
- Chester
- Claude
- Clement
- Cleve
- Clyde
- Dorsey
- Edwin
- Ernest
- Floyd
- Frank
- Grover
- Harold
- Hiram
- Homer
- Jarvis
- Judson
- Kermit
- Lionel
- Lonzo
- Louis
- Loyal
- Lyle
- Mack
- Morris
- Norris
- Otto
- Perry
- Raleigh
- Raymond
- Roscoe
- Rufus
- Smith
- Valentine
- Vernon
- Virgil